Robin Wood (born
Robert Paul Wood on 23 February 1931, in Richmond, London,
EnglandEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
) is a
CanadaCanada is a country occupying most of northern North America, extending from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
-based author of several books of
film criticismFilm criticism is the analysis and evaluation of films, individually and collectively. In general, this can be divided into journalistic criticism that appears regularly in newspapers, and other popular, mass-media outlets and academic criticism by film scholars that is informed by film theory and...
, including volumes on
Alfred HitchcockSir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British filmmaker and producer who pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in his native United Kingdom in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
,
Howard HawksHoward Winchester Hawks was an influential American film director, producer and screenwriter of the classic Hollywood era...
,
Ingmar BergmanErnst Ingmar Bergman was a Swedish director, writer and producer for film, stage and television. His influential body of work often dealt with themes such as bleakness and despair, as well as comedy and hope, in his cinematic exploration of the human condition...
, and
Arthur PennArthur Hiller Penn is a film director and producer with a hefty background as a theatre director as well. Although best known as the director of Bonnie and Clyde , Penn amassed a critically acclaimed body of work though the 1960s and 1970s, keenly focusing on themes relevant to the...
. Wood was also a member, until 2007, of the editorial collective that publishes the magazine
CineACTIONCineAction is a Canada-based film magazine, published three times a year, edited by an editorial collective that includes critic Robin Wood...
!, a film theory collective founded by Wood and other colleagues of
TorontoToronto is the most populous city in Canada and the provincial capital of Ontario. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. With over 2.5 million residents, it is the fifth most populous municipality in North America...
's
York UniversityYork University is a university located in Toronto, Ontario. It is Canada's third-largest university and has produced several of the country's top leaders across the humanities and in sciences such as chemistry, meteorology and space science....
where he recently retired as professor emeritus of film.
Robin Wood (born
Robert Paul Wood on 23 February 1931, in Richmond, London,
EnglandEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
) is a
CanadaCanada is a country occupying most of northern North America, extending from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
-based author of several books of
film criticismFilm criticism is the analysis and evaluation of films, individually and collectively. In general, this can be divided into journalistic criticism that appears regularly in newspapers, and other popular, mass-media outlets and academic criticism by film scholars that is informed by film theory and...
, including volumes on
Alfred HitchcockSir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British filmmaker and producer who pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in his native United Kingdom in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
,
Howard HawksHoward Winchester Hawks was an influential American film director, producer and screenwriter of the classic Hollywood era...
,
Ingmar BergmanErnst Ingmar Bergman was a Swedish director, writer and producer for film, stage and television. His influential body of work often dealt with themes such as bleakness and despair, as well as comedy and hope, in his cinematic exploration of the human condition...
, and
Arthur PennArthur Hiller Penn is a film director and producer with a hefty background as a theatre director as well. Although best known as the director of Bonnie and Clyde , Penn amassed a critically acclaimed body of work though the 1960s and 1970s, keenly focusing on themes relevant to the...
. Wood was also a member, until 2007, of the editorial collective that publishes the magazine
CineACTIONCineAction is a Canada-based film magazine, published three times a year, edited by an editorial collective that includes critic Robin Wood...
!, a film theory collective founded by Wood and other colleagues of
TorontoToronto is the most populous city in Canada and the provincial capital of Ontario. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. With over 2.5 million residents, it is the fifth most populous municipality in North America...
's
York UniversityYork University is a university located in Toronto, Ontario. It is Canada's third-largest university and has produced several of the country's top leaders across the humanities and in sciences such as chemistry, meteorology and space science....
where he recently retired as professor emeritus of film. He is still contributing editor of the magazine.
According to
Contemporary Authors he attended
Jesus College, CambridgeJesus College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England.The college was founded in 1496 on the site of a Benedictine nunnery by John Alcock, then Bishop of Ely...
, where he was influenced by
F. R. LeavisFrank Raymond Leavis CH was an influential British literary critic of the early-to-mid-twentieth century. He taught and studied for nearly his entire life at Downing College, Cambridge.-Early life:...
and A. P. Rossiter, and graduated in 1953 with a diploma in education. From 1954 to 1958, Wood taught in schools in both England and
SwedenSweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe...
. After a year in
LilleLille is a city in northern France. It is the principal city of the Lille Métropole, the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the country behind those of Paris, Lyon and Marseille. Lille is situated on the Deûle River, near France's border with Belgium...
,
FranceFrance , officially the French Republic , is a country located in Western Europe, with several overseas islands and territories located on other continents. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean...
, teaching English, Wood returned to schools in England, and again in Sweden. On May 17, 1960, Wood married Aline Macdonald. They had three children, Carin, Fiona, and Simon. Wood began to contribute to the film journal
Movie in 1962, primarily on the strength of an essay he wrote for
Cahiers du cinémaCahiers du cinéma is an influential French film magazine founded in 1951 by André Bazin, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze and Joseph-Marie Lo Duca...
on Hitchcock's
PsychoPsycho is an American suspense/horror movie directed by Alfred Hitchcock, from the screenplay by Joseph Stefano. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Robert Bloch, which was in turn inspired by the crimes of Wisconsin serial killer Ed Gein....
. In 1965, he published his first book,
Hitchcock's Films. From 1969 to 1972, under the aegis of Peter Harcourt, Wood was a lecturer in film at
Queen's UniversityQueen's University, generally referred to simply as Queen's, is a coeducational, non-sectarian, research intensive, public university located in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. In 2008, Queen's maintained its status as one of the top universities in Canada.The Church of Scotland established Queen's...
,
Kingston, OntarioKingston, Ontario is a Canadian city located in the eastern portion of Southern Ontario, where Lake Ontario runs into the St. Lawrence River and the Thousand Islands begin.Kingston is the county seat of Frontenac County...
. In September 1974, Wood and his wife divorced. Around this time, he also had a relationship with John Anderson, the dedicatee in at least one of Wood's books. Later he was to meet Richard Lippe, with whom he has been living since 1977.
From 1973 to 1977, Wood was a lecturer on film studies at the
University of WarwickThe University of Warwick is a British campus university located on the outskirts of Coventry, West Midlands, England. It was established in 1965 as part of a government initiative to expand access to higher education, and in 2000 Warwick Medical School was opened as part of an initiative to train...
,
CoventryCoventry is a city and metropolitan borough in the county of West Midlands in England. Coventry is the 9th largest city in England and the 11th largest in the United Kingdom. It is also the second largest city in the English Midlands, after Birmingham with a population of 300,848...
, where he met the future film scholar Andrew Britton, whose influence on Wood, by his own account, was as great as Wood's on his student. Wood became professor of film studies at
York UniversityYork University is a university located in Toronto, Ontario. It is Canada's third-largest university and has produced several of the country's top leaders across the humanities and in sciences such as chemistry, meteorology and space science....
,
TorontoToronto is the most populous city in Canada and the provincial capital of Ontario. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. With over 2.5 million residents, it is the fifth most populous municipality in North America...
,
OntarioOntario is a province located in east-central Canada, the largest by population and second largest, after Quebec, in total area. Ontario is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Manitoba to the west and Quebec to the east, and 5 U.S...
in 1977, where he taught until his retirement in the early 1990s. In 1985 Wood helped form a collective with several other students and colleagues to publish
CineACTION!.
Wood's books include
Ingmar BergmanErnst Ingmar Bergman was a Swedish director, writer and producer for film, stage and television. His influential body of work often dealt with themes such as bleakness and despair, as well as comedy and hope, in his cinematic exploration of the human condition...
(Praeger, New York, 1969),
Arthur Penn (Praeger, New York, 1969),
The Apu Trilogy (Praeger, New York, 1971),
The American Nightmare: Essays on the Horror Film, edited by Robin Wood and Richard Lippe (Festival of Festivals, Toronto, 1979),
Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan (Columbia University Press, New York, 1986),
Sexual Politics and Narrative Film: Hollywood and Beyond (Columbia University Press, New York, 1998),
The Wings of the Dove: Henry James in the 1990s (
British Film InstituteThe British Film Institute is a charitable organisation established by Royal Charter to:-Cinemas:The BFI runs the BFI Southbank and IMAX theatre, both located on the south bank of the River Thames in London...
Publishing, London, 1999), and
Rio Bravo (BFI Publishing, London, 2003).
Columbia University PressColumbia University Press is a university press based in New York City, and affiliated with Columbia University. It is currently directed by James D. Jordan and publishes titles in the humanities and sciences, including the fields of literary and cultural studies, history, social work, sociology,...
has reprinted and updated his book on Hitchcock, and
Wayne State University PressWayne State University Press , founded in 1941, is a university press that is part of Wayne State University. It publishes under its own name and also the imprints Painted Turtle and Great Lakes Books....
has recently begun a series of reprints of his early books, with new introductions. The first in the series is
Howard Hawks in 2006, to be followed by
Personal Views in 2006, and
Ingmar Bergman.
Changes in Wood's critical thinking divide his career into two parts. Wood's early books are still prized by film students for their close readings in the
auteur theoryIn film criticism, the 1950s-era Auteur theory holds that a director's films reflect that director's personal creative vision, as if he were the primary "Auteur"...
tradition and their elegant prose style. Wood brought great psychological insight into the motivations of characters in movies such as
Psycho and
MarnieMarnie is a psychological thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock and based on the novel of the same name by Winston Graham. The film stars Tippi Hedren and Sean Connery. The original film score was composed by Bernard Herrmann.-Plot:...
, and Wood was admired for his tendency to champion under-recognized directors and films. After his coming out as a gay man, Wood's writings became more — though not exclusively — political, primarily from a stance associated with Marxist and Freudian thinking, and with gay rights. Wood has always been a surprisingly personal or confessional writer for someone ostensibly attached to academia, and his forwards are often autobiographical essays about the life experiences that informed the critical views to follow. The turning point in Wood's views can arguably be pinpointed in his essay "Responsibilities of a Gay Film Critic", originally a speech at the National Film Theater and later printed in
Film Comment magazine in 1978. It was subsequently included in the revised edition of his book
Personal Views.
Selected bibliography
- Hitchcock's Films, 1965
- Howard Hawks, 1968
- Ingmar Bergman, 1969
- Claude Chabrol, Wood and Michael Walker, 1970
- Antonioni, Revised Edition, Wood and Ian Cameron, 1971
- Personal Views: Explorations in Film, 1976
- Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan, 1986
- Sexual Politics and Narrative Film: Hollywood and Beyond, 1998
- Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan…and Beyond, 2003
Legacy
Some of Wood's students have also become notable film scholars, including Andrew Britton and Tony Williams.
External links