Cinematic Encounters: Interviews and Dialogues

This collection of articles and interviews with filmmakers and film critics, written over many years, proves a lesser addition to the oeuvre of veteran film critic Rosenbaum (Goodbye Cinema, Hello Cinephilia). He is an excellent interviewer, but the book is only as good as his subjects, some of whom are more rewarding than others. It begins with its strongest selection, a fascinating look at Orson Welles’s abortive first film project, an adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Of the interviewees, the most intriguing are French comedic director Jacques Tati, for whom the author once worked, and American independent filmmaker Jim Jarmusch, interviewed upon the release of his 1995 film Dead Man. Unfortunately, some of the interviews, concerned with subjects no doubt near and dear to the interviewees, will be too obscure for the general film-enthusiast reader. Most surprisingly, this is the case in two interviews with famed French director Alain Resnais, who comes across as reticent, bordering on unengaged. Rosenbaum is a consistently strong interlocutor, but only the most hardcore of film fans need to add this book to their home libraries. (Dec.)