Tarantino’s take on the grindhouse phenomenon opens tonight

Grindhouse

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6l-InqDHmA]

Grindhouse (2007) – Rodriguez and Tarantino

As I’ve pointed out before here, Greencine is serializing Eddie Muller’s 1996 non-fiction book Grindhouse: The Forbidden World of “Adults Only” Cinema on the grindhouse phenomenon. From Greencine’s latest entry:

“I’m almost surprised that Tarantino and Rodriguez didn’t convince their patrons, Harvey and Bob Weinstein, to coat the floors of the theaters themselves with the very special shoe-sole-sticking gunk that was an unavoidable aspect of the real grindhouse experience,” writes Premiere‘s Glenn Kenny. “Death Proof offers ‘thrills’ that are deeply unpleasant and deeply unwholesome, and it’s here that Grindhouse comes closest to achieving the ‘climate of perdition’ that another surrealist critic, Robert Benayoun termed the hallmark of ‘authentic sadistic cinema.’ A lot of people associate a taste for grindhouse movies with the tiresome condescension of the ‘so-bad-it’s-good’ ethos, but Tarantino understands the aesthetics of aberrance that animated the explorations of so-called trash hounds.” —Greencine

Returning to Glenn Kenny’s review, I am intrigued by his opening lines mentioning Ado Kyrou and by the mention of Benayoun. I quote:

“…[G]o and learn to see the worst films; they are sometimes sublime,” the surrealist filmmaker and critic Ado Kyrou advised in 1963. While neither Robert Rodriguez nor Quentin Tarantino are (to my knowledge) disciples of Kyrou, they carry his ethos in their bones.

…

And it’s here that Death Proof offers “thrills” that are deeply unpleasant and deeply unwholesome, and it’s here that Grindhouse comes closest to achieving the “climate of perdition” that another surrealist critic, Robert Benayoun, termed the hallmark of “authentic sadistic cinema.”

I am especially interested in where Benayoun supposedly talked about the “climate of perdition” and “authentic sadistic cinema.”

Anyone know more?

2 thoughts on “Tarantino’s take on the grindhouse phenomenon opens tonight”

  1. Andrej Maltar

    The quote is from Zaroff; or The Prosperities of Vice an article that Benayoun wrote for Présence du Cinéma. You’ll find the translation in Hammond’s Shadow and its Shadow.
    I must confess that I find it strange to have Benayoun and Kyrou as witnesses for Tarantino. As they both opposed derivative forms of cinema. Is it pure coincidence that Tarantino named his company A Band Apart after one of Godard’s films?
    Andrej

    Thanks Andrej, very interesting article on parallel worlds, I like it.
    Jan

  2. Mike

    I agree with Andrej, comparisons to those two would seem quite a stretch to me… in addition to what was said above, and also it seems that Benayoun and Kyrou seemed to stress and importance on a somewhat meditative element of the fantastique, which neither Tarantino nor Rodriguez have ever approached… I do think there’s an irony in the method by which Tarantino exploits exploitation films though!

    Mike,
    Like in … exploitation of exploitation films is meta-exploitation?

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