GARY GIDDENS + THE SEVENTH SEAL (TELL IT LIKE IT IS/DON’T HIDE YOUR FEARS)
“Other imports had found appreciative audiences in the United States before The Seventh Seal passed through customs, including Kurosawa’s Rashomon in 1951 and Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria in 1957. But the effect of The Seventh Seal’s American debut at New York’s Paris Theater in October 1958, reinforced eight months later by the opening of Bergman’s Wild Strawberries, was transformative. With that one-two punch, cinema catapulted to the front line of a cultural advance guard that—shoulder to shoulder with modern jazz, abstract painting, Beat writing, theater of the absurd—sought to undermine the intractable mass taste promoted by Hollywood, television, and the Brill Building.”
2 years ago