Jean Louis Schefer (born in 1938) is a prolific and influential scholar of art history, theology, philosophy, music, and linguistics, as well as an author of fiction.
Schefer's insights flicker in and out. Flashes of illumination are followed by pages that read like an obscure prose poem-suggestive, but enigmatic and sometimes unyielding. A strange and often beautiful book, The Ordinary Man of Cinema has little to say about the beauty of film itself. Rather, the word that keeps resurfacing is sublime. For Schefer, film does not inspire aesthetic contemplation but instead directs us toward the limits of the thinkable. -Artforum Schefer's insights flicker in and out. Flashes of illumination are followed by pages that read like an obscure prose poem-suggestive, but enigmatic and sometimes unyielding. A strange and often beautiful book, The Ordinary Man of Cinema has little to say about the beauty of film itself. Rather, the word that keeps resurfacing is sublime. For Schefer, film does not inspire aesthetic contemplation but instead directs us toward the limits of the thinkable. -Artforum * Reviews *