Peter Wollen R.I.P. (1 Viewer)

[johnmcmasters]

I wasn't sure in which forum to post this... so...here goes:

Peter Wollen, the supreme film critic and theorist, has died at the age of 81.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/26/movies/peter-wollen-dead.html

Mr. Wollen was one of my teachers at Northwestern University in the early 1970's -- and along with his colleagues, Paddy Whannel and Stuart Kaminsky, changed the way I watched and experienced movies. He was always thoughtful, polite, and engaging. He and his wife at the time, Laura Mulvey, were also working on their film "Penthesilea" so he was fully engaged not only in theories about film, but also in the practicalities of actually making them. I had several classes with him, including the best course I've ever taken -- his graduate seminar on "Hitchcock" during which as a class we saw multiple films each week and then dissected them during lively discussions. He would occasionally get a hold of films that he was screening apart from the film curriculum -- and he'd screen them on weekends in the Northwestern Film Annex -- he'd invite anyone at the Annex during those times (we were usually editing the films we were cobbling together) to join him for those films. He was a very guarded personality -- but never aloof or off-putting as some academicians can be.

I treasured him as a teacher. My most heartfelt condolences to his family and friends.

 

[lark144]

Thanks, John, for posting this. I was in Peter Wollen's graduate Hitchcock seminar at NYU/Tisch in the early 80's. I think it may have been my favorite class. At the time, Mr. Wollen and his then wife, Laura Mulvey, had completed another film, RIDDLES OF THE SPHINX, which they showed after one of the Hitchcock films; i think was VERTIGO, which made for a very intense evening of cinema-going.