Robert Denerstein, Rocky Mountain News, September 11, 1983:"The birth of cinema was sinful and took place in the marketplace," said Tarkovsky, whose films have won no popularity contests in the Soviet Union. "Cinema was born to earn money. No other discipline of art was born for this purpose. Up until now, whoever made films must face the fact of this birth.
"Cinema is not an entertainment; it is a high poetical discipline of art. As Goethe said, 'It is equally difficult to read a good book as to write a good book....' If I ever make a film that would please everybody, I would feel I had done something wrong. My intuition tells me that the audience is in a very critical moment now, that they are willing to find in cinema something different -- not an entertainment but something deeper and more substantial."
William K. Everson, Daily Variety:
There is no question that in some ways Tarkovsky is entitled to be ranked as a contemporary Eisenstein, but alas, the man was somewhat less impressive than his films.
In a very pretentious address, he underlined old artistic cliches. The cinema, he said, was not and should not be an entertainment, only an art. He went on to say that his new film ["Nostalghia"] did not contain a single frame of "entertainment," but was purely art, and anybody who just wanted to be entertained should leave.
Everson, Variety:
However, there were balancing repercussions the next day, the kind of non-passive response that has always made Telluride lively.
Richard Widmark, at his tribute, seemed relatively restrained. He is a shy and self-effacing person, an facing a large crowd obviously made him uncomfortable. But after the expected pleasantries, he suddenly turned passionate...
Denerstein, Rocky Mountain News:
Widmark's long career began in 1947 with "Kiss of Death," in which he played Tommy Udo, a sadist who pushed a woman in a wheelchair down a flight of stairs. And giggled. [Widmark received an Oscar nomination for the role.] After an especially entertaining selection of clips, Widmark took to the stage, where he thanked the festival -- the first he had ever attended -- and read from a prepared statement.
"Before I go," said Widmark, I'd like to say a word in defense of entertainment. Film is a medium in which there is room for everyone. But we should never forget that it's a medium that had its beginnings in simpler times...."
Everson, Variety:
Without specifically referring to Tarkovsky, he pointed out that there as room for art and entertainment -- and that Griffith, Keaton, Lloyd and Chaplin were all "entertainers." The applause was deafening, and clearly Widmark was saying what most would only say privately.
[I also recall him mentioning Orson Welles and John Ford -- with whom he had worked twice, though maybe my memory is just chiming in from a distance. Widmark's tribute film was Jules Dassin's "Night and the City."]
Benson, LA Times:
To at least one audience member, Tarkovsky's words demanded an answer. The next night, Widmark waded into the fray like the John Ford stalwart he played in "Two Rode Together," which the audience had seen only minutes ago [in career clips]. Calling film a medium with room for every kind of expression, and listing a dozen or more of its great actors and directors, "entertainers all," Widmark said that each person was entitled to his own opinion, "but in the real world, let us not denigrate entertainment. Pretentiousness and pomposity are not art."
Denerstein, Rocky Mountain News:
The next morning I spotted Widmark at a restaurant and asked him why he felt he needed to defend entertainment, which isn't exactly under seige anyway. Why had he made such an impassioned plea? Widmark replied with a single word.
"Tarkovsky."
Buck, Vanity Fair:
... Richard Widmark, interviewed at his own tribute, said: "Tarkovsky. He's a phony. He stinks."
* * * *
The ironies of the occasion(s) still thrill and fascinate me. They began with the spectacle of Zanussi, in my opinion a more profound artist than Tarkovsky could dream of being, acting as a humble translator. Zanussi would reveal a spiritual and distinctly American vision of Monument Valley in "A Year of the Quiet Sun." I don't know if Tarkovsky (who died in 1986) ever saw Zanussi's film, or if he would have understood it if he had.
Tarkovsky was clearly giving a crowd-pleasing performance, doing a "Mad Russian" routine for the American film festival audience that was perhaps a variation on Oscar Wilde's more effete schtick when he visited -- and entertained -- Colorado and the American West in 1882. (At least he didn't go full-cretin on us and start pounding his shoe on the stage, Khrushchev-style.) I agree with him that his movie was not remotely entertaining -- at least no more so than Ridley Scott's "American Gangster," from which I am taking a break to write this because I find it so incredibly tedious.
As Everson wrote, it is easy to sympathize with showman Tarkovsky's passion on the stage, even if you don't see it in a film like "Nostalghia." Widmark was just as impassioned, only classier (even when saying, "He stinks," in private), because his vision of cinema was both broader and deeper than Tarkovsky's. (And let me add that Zanussi could make anyone sound more eloquent than they already were. Widmark didn't even have the benefit of Zanussi's translation skills!) Entertainment does not preclude art. For that matter, neither do pretentiousness and pomposity, and there's no question Tarkovky unashamedly aspired to both. Meanwhile, strangely, it was Tarkovsky, not Widmark, who was promoting the idea that "masses of spectators" should drive or determine what could be explored in cinema -- asserting his own false correlation between artistry and popular acceptance. (Who would believe it possible that any film could "please everyone"? Only someone who believed that was the definition of "entertainment.")
Still, I wouldn't trade the poetry and artistry of all Tarkovsky's work for that one long shot of Widmark and James Stewart on the bank of the river in "Two Rode Together." What's more, I would never think that I had to.
At Telluride, Tarkovsky was a tourist. His provincialism and condescension were palpable. Nobody is surprised by arrogance in film directors, but he knew nothing about the westerns he was pontificating against. Besides, you don't come through Monument Valley to Telluride to assert your artistic superiority to the likes of John Ford -- especially when you know there's a man who worked with Ford right there. Widmark saw that the town -- and the world, and the cinema -- was big enough for both of them. Tarkovsky, if we take him at his word, could not. (I don't think this was due to his conditioning under Soviet-style "communism," but goes back to something more ancient and fundamental -- plain old aesthetic messianism.)
Today I like to think that Widmark's Telluride speech could stand as his epitaph, and that he, too, ranks among those film artists, entertainers all.