In Memoriam Paul Arthur, Cineaste Associate Editor
“How do you write a love letter to a movie?,” Paul Arthur mused in the opening line of his 2001review of Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love ( Cineaste , Vol. 26.3). That elegantly direct yet deceptively simple question so perfectly captures the voice and the essence of our deeply respected and sorely missed friend and colleague, who passed away at age 60 on March 25, 2008. In the line to follow, Paul qualified his question: “Not a boffo review brimming with blurbable superlatives or a fine-grained analysis attuned to visual felicities, but something more appropriate—if hopelessly inadequate—to the sensual pleasure, emotional attachment, and fierce admiration (love?) occasioned by a work of stunning achievement.” And this was Paul—the film critic and scholar whose prose was passionately judicious; engagingly complex; reflexively critical. Whether writing about Wong or far more frequently on these pages about documentary—a subject on which his body of work is unparalleled—a deep sense of integrity and appreciation of the human condition guided his sharp eye and incisive intellect. Whether in declaring documentarian Frederick Wiseman a national treasure or railing against the “self-congratulatory take on human absurdity” he saw as fundamentally exploitative in many an Errol Morris documentary (as expressed in his final piece, written for Artforum during his illness), Paul always challenged his readers as he did himself, never taking the convenient route to the easy or the obvious. Fiercely dedicated to the avant-garde, his book, A Line of Sight: American Avant-Garde Film since 1965 (2005) is an achievement that more than delivers on the publisher's (University of Minnesota Press) claim that “for three decades, Paul Arthur has been a leading observer and critic as well as a direct participant in America's avant-garde cinema,” something readily apparent on a much smaller scale in Paul's Cineaste review of Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant-Garde Film 1894-1941 (distributed by Image Entertainment) (Vol. 32.1). In considering Paul's extensive body of writing for Cineaste , Film Comment , and Millennium Film Journal , which he co-edited—to name but a few of the many journals to which he contributed—and his dozens of anthologized essays on documentary, the avant-garde, and film noir, the subject of his 1972 doctoral dissertation in cinema studies at NYU, we can only marvel at his accomplishments and feel the loss of so many contributions to film scholarship and criticism that undoubtedly were yet to come. (Paul's friends and colleagues are working to ensure that his nearly completed book on documentary filmmaker, Nick Broomfield, [University of Illinois Press] and his Tokens of Immediacy: Documentary Cinema, 1989-Present , will find their way into print.) Beyond his work as a film scholar and critic, Paul also was a filmmaker with 15 shorts and one feature to his credit. Paul was in no small part aligned with the Angry Young Men, if only in spirit, “passion” thus the operative word when describing him. He brought that passion to his writing as well as his teaching—at Montclair State University since 1989 and at NYU, USC, Parsons School of Design, and Bard College before that. As a teacher, he worked on finding the very best way of reaching his students, always aware of their own level of understanding and never condescending—a rare quality among active and accomplished scholars who also find themselves in the classroom. He once referred to his introductory students, many of whom were never going to major in film, as the “most important students” to teach—they're the ones who will attend, rent, tune into, and talk about films with their friends and family, and Paul saw working with them as a great opportunity. Always a dynamic presence in the classroom, Paul was genuinely interested in what his students had to say. As a father, husband and partner, Paul was as passionate and devoted as he was to his work. He remained close friends with his former wife, Karen (a physician who was at his side at the time of his death) and deeply loved their daughters Jarrett (25) and Devin (22), expressing such joy and interest in their own developing interests. He was an unflagging care-giver to his long-time partner Susan through her protracted battle with cancer, and discovered, not quite a year after her death, that he was suffering from the melanoma that would claim his life, stunningly, in less than two months after the diagnosis. In the several months just before his illness he nursed his dog Monk through surgery, missing more than one press screening to ensure Monk's comfort and safety. Paul was fun and flexible—and wryly self-deprecating, especially in regard to his own temper, which flared infrequently but dramatically! Sometimes Paul would preface a point by saying, “This may be my usual paranoia but….” and what usually followed was just that—something we'd laugh about within five minutes of talking it through. Actively involved in Movement politics and the New Left, Paul of course understood the value of skepticism, uncertainty, and, yes, paranoia, his sardonic humor arising from dedicated activism, experience, and knowledge—lending it all the more texture. To that warm, intelligent, robust, and unflaggingly dedicated father, friend, and cineaste (Paul once rearranged his teaching schedule with New York Film Festival press screenings in mind—only to discover that he hadn't factored in his commuting time!), we can only express our grief and deep sense of loss. The pages of Cineaste will miss the flair, the voice, and the insight of our dear colleague Paul. In a special section on Wong Kar-wai ( Cineaste , Vol. 30.4), a few years after his review of In the Mood for Love , Paul reconsidered that review which was to have been “a lustrous epistle adorned with unaccumstomed critical language, devoid of balance or qualification or textual analogy.” He admitted, “In retrospect that impulse was unfulfilled, side-tracked by fears of vulnerability or perhaps by unconscious fidelity to bourgeois codes of movie viewing.” The honesty, the willingness to confront and write about the very human fears we all bring to our work, at one time or another, is what made Paul Arthur a truly great writer, film critic, and human being who will remain vital, present, and influential through the people whose lives he has touched and the substantial body of work he has contributed. On our main page, we have included a selection of some of Paul's writing, including his review of In the Mood for Love. Cineaste, Vol. 33 No.3 (Summer 2008).

In Memoriam
Paul Arthur, Cineaste Associate Editor

“How do you write a love letter to a movie?,” Paul Arthur mused in the opening line of his 2001review of Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love ( Cineaste , Vol. 26.3). That elegantly direct yet deceptively simple question so perfectly captures the voice and the essence of our deeply respected and sorely missed friend and colleague, who passed away at age 60 on March 25, 2008. In the line to follow, Paul qualified his question: “Not a boffo review brimming with blurbable superlatives or a fine-grained analysis attuned to visual felicities, but something more appropriate—if hopelessly inadequate—to the sensual pleasure, emotional attachment, and fierce admiration (love?) occasioned by a work of stunning achievement.” And this was Paul—the film critic and scholar whose prose was passionately judicious; engagingly complex; reflexively critical. Whether writing about Wong or far more frequently on these pages about documentary—a subject on which his body of work is unparalleled—a deep sense of integrity and appreciation of the human condition guided his sharp eye and incisive intellect. Whether in declaring documentarian Frederick Wiseman a national treasure or railing against the “self-congratulatory take on human absurdity” he saw as fundamentally exploitative in many an Errol Morris documentary (as expressed in his final piece, written for Artforum during his illness), Paul always challenged his readers as he did himself, never taking the convenient route to the easy or the obvious.

Fiercely dedicated to the avant-garde, his book, A Line of Sight: American Avant-Garde Film since 1965 (2005) is an achievement that more than delivers on the publisher's (University of Minnesota Press) claim that “for three decades, Paul Arthur has been a leading observer and critic as well as a direct participant in America's avant-garde cinema,” something readily apparent on a much smaller scale in Paul's Cineaste review of Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant-Garde Film 1894-1941 (distributed by Image Entertainment) (Vol. 32.1). In considering Paul's extensive body of writing for Cineaste , Film Comment , and Millennium Film Journal , which he co-edited—to name but a few of the many journals to which he contributed—and his dozens of anthologized essays on documentary, the avant-garde, and film noir, the subject of his 1972 doctoral dissertation in cinema studies at NYU, we can only marvel at his accomplishments and feel the loss of so many contributions to film scholarship and criticism that undoubtedly were yet to come. (Paul's friends and colleagues are working to ensure that his nearly completed book on documentary filmmaker, Nick Broomfield, [University of Illinois Press] and his Tokens of Immediacy: Documentary Cinema, 1989-Present , will find their way into print.) Beyond his work as a film scholar and critic, Paul also was a filmmaker with 15 shorts and one feature to his credit.

Paul was in no small part aligned with the Angry Young Men, if only in spirit, “passion” thus the operative word when describing him. He brought that passion to his writing as well as his teaching—at Montclair State University since 1989 and at NYU, USC, Parsons School of Design, and Bard College before that. As a teacher, he worked on finding the very best way of reaching his students, always aware of their own level of understanding and never condescending—a rare quality among active and accomplished scholars who also find themselves in the classroom. He once referred to his introductory students, many of whom were never going to major in film, as the “most important students” to teach—they're the ones who will attend, rent, tune into, and talk about films with their friends and family, and Paul saw working with them as a great opportunity. Always a dynamic presence in the classroom, Paul was genuinely interested in what his students had to say.

As a father, husband and partner, Paul was as passionate and devoted as he was to his work. He remained close friends with his former wife, Karen (a physician who was at his side at the time of his death) and deeply loved their daughters Jarrett (25) and Devin (22), expressing such joy and interest in their own developing interests. He was an unflagging care-giver to his long-time partner Susan through her protracted battle with cancer, and discovered, not quite a year after her death, that he was suffering from the melanoma that would claim his life, stunningly, in less than two months after the diagnosis. In the several months just before his illness he nursed his dog Monk through surgery, missing more than one press screening to ensure Monk's comfort and safety.

Paul was fun and flexible—and wryly self-deprecating, especially in regard to his own temper, which flared infrequently but dramatically! Sometimes Paul would preface a point by saying, “This may be my usual paranoia but….” and what usually followed was just that—something we'd laugh about within five minutes of talking it through. Actively involved in Movement politics and the New Left, Paul of course understood the value of skepticism, uncertainty, and, yes, paranoia, his sardonic humor arising from dedicated activism, experience, and knowledge—lending it all the more texture.

To that warm, intelligent, robust, and unflaggingly dedicated father, friend, and cineaste (Paul once rearranged his teaching schedule with New York Film Festival press screenings in mind—only to discover that he hadn't factored in his commuting time!), we can only express our grief and deep sense of loss. The pages of Cineaste will miss the flair, the voice, and the insight of our dear colleague Paul.

In a special section on Wong Kar-wai ( Cineaste , Vol. 30.4), a few years after his review of In the Mood for Love , Paul reconsidered that review which was to have been “a lustrous epistle adorned with unaccumstomed critical language, devoid of balance or qualification or textual analogy.” He admitted, “In retrospect that impulse was unfulfilled, side-tracked by fears of vulnerability or perhaps by unconscious fidelity to bourgeois codes of movie viewing.” The honesty, the willingness to confront and write about the very human fears we all bring to our work, at one time or another, is what made Paul Arthur a truly great writer, film critic, and human being who will remain vital, present, and influential through the people whose lives he has touched and the substantial body of work he has contributed.

On our main page, we have included a selection of some of Paul's writing, including his review of In the Mood for Love.

Cineaste, Vol. 33 No.3 (Summer 2008).

In MemoriamPaul Arthur, Cineaste Associate Editor

In Memoriam
Paul Arthur, Cineaste Associate Editor