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calimac1) To my Lieutenant Kijé post:
One of the reference sources claiming that the film was never made is, of all things, the esteemed (but not as reliable as it'd like to think) New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, if that's what it means where the second edition says in Prokofiev's catalogue, "film unrealized."
I tracked down again the review of the film's original American showing that first proved to me it really had been made. The American title was actually The Tsar Wants to Sleep, and it was reviewed by Otis Ferguson in The New Republic, Dec. 26, 1934, p. 193. The evaluation is somewhat mixed, but overall Ferguson is pleased that the mighty Soviet has shown a sense of humor. Probably he'd felt bogged down; TNR reviewed a lot of Russian films in those days. One parenthetical comment, "The music, by Prokofiev, is good," is all he has to say about that.
2) To an entry in my survey "The Year's Work in Tolkien Studies 2006," in Tolkien Studies 6, now online at Project Muse, if you have access to that.
This is my summary of an article in the collection Tolkien and Modernity, beginning with a reference to the preceding article in the same collection:
I should also point out that if Hughes is right, it completely puts the lie to all the other film fans who are trying to soothe us with the assurance that the book is still there, unchanged, on the shelf. What use is the constancy of the book if your understanding of it is necessarily changed? In fact Hughes is wrong; it's possible to recover Tolkien without the taint of Jackson, but it takes work, a lot of hard work - work which is not aided by constantly having to fight off people like Hughes who wish us to accept "this new reality." Those are like unto the words of Saruman.
One of the reference sources claiming that the film was never made is, of all things, the esteemed (but not as reliable as it'd like to think) New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, if that's what it means where the second edition says in Prokofiev's catalogue, "film unrealized."
I tracked down again the review of the film's original American showing that first proved to me it really had been made. The American title was actually The Tsar Wants to Sleep, and it was reviewed by Otis Ferguson in The New Republic, Dec. 26, 1934, p. 193. The evaluation is somewhat mixed, but overall Ferguson is pleased that the mighty Soviet has shown a sense of humor. Probably he'd felt bogged down; TNR reviewed a lot of Russian films in those days. One parenthetical comment, "The music, by Prokofiev, is good," is all he has to say about that.
2) To an entry in my survey "The Year's Work in Tolkien Studies 2006," in Tolkien Studies 6, now online at Project Muse, if you have access to that.
This is my summary of an article in the collection Tolkien and Modernity, beginning with a reference to the preceding article in the same collection:
Taking as a given the subtleties unearthed by Alliot, "The Maker’s Will ... Fulfilled?" by Jessica Burke and Anthony Burdge (Weinreich and Honegger 1: 111-33) is not a research article but a polemic, arguing that Tolkien had the ability to tap into (ultimately divine) inspiration – in older language, that he was possessed of a genius – and that his work has true magic; it is real in a sense that much of mundane reality is not. Critics who dismiss the literary value of fantasy do not appreciate this. Tragically, much of Tolkien’s modern readership – in particular, the "genetically bred fan" base of Peter Jackson (127) – cannot either. In Burke and Burdge’s striking comparison, they are unable to distinguish a unicorn from a surgically-altered goat.And what I didn't add, but have been going back and forth on ever since on whether I should have, was this comment:
The incredulous incomprehension of these vital points by the professedly Jackson-embracing Shaun F.D. Hughes in his review of the collection (Tolkien Studies 5 (2008): 249) only underlines the need for the work Burke and Burdge undertake here.The problem is that Hughes' comment, "There is no return to a pre-Peter-Jackson understanding of Tolkien" and advising scholars to "[take] advantage of this new reality," whatever that means (should we embrace the goat as a true unicorn?), itself shows a profoundly, and chillingly, un-Tolkienian attitude. I would suggest to Mr. Hughes a reading of the section of Tolkien's essay "On Fairy-Stories" titled "Recovery" and a long silent contemplation on what that means.
I should also point out that if Hughes is right, it completely puts the lie to all the other film fans who are trying to soothe us with the assurance that the book is still there, unchanged, on the shelf. What use is the constancy of the book if your understanding of it is necessarily changed? In fact Hughes is wrong; it's possible to recover Tolkien without the taint of Jackson, but it takes work, a lot of hard work - work which is not aided by constantly having to fight off people like Hughes who wish us to accept "this new reality." Those are like unto the words of Saruman.
