Beauty through a Cracked Windshield

In this morning's New York Times Manohla Dargis previews the 10-film Robert Frank retrospective playing this weekend at the Anthology Film Archives. In case you don't want to read the whole thing, here's my favorite part [spoiler alert]:

The critic Amy Taubin has described The Americans as a road movie, an observation that underscores the rootless, searching quality of so many of [Robert Frank's] images, still and moving. This sensibility is even there in a lovely, understated 2002 short video, Paper Route, that finds him riding shotgun with a newspaper delivery man through Mr. Frank’s adopted hometown of Mabou, Nova Scotia. For 23 minutes he keeps his eye on this world’s barren beauty through a cracked windshield, which is about as perfect a metaphor for his persistence of vision as I can imagine.

Click here to visit the Anthology Film Archives.

Several beautifully packaged DVD sets of Robert Frank's films are available from Steidl. That's what they look like right there on the left.

Read a short review of Robert Frank's infamous Rolling Stones documentary Cocksucker Blues and watch a clip at Wooooo.