Jordan’s film is a glorious visual achievement in its own right, as well as part of the rancorous ongoing dispute over Smith’s legacy.
Comment
04/14/07
Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis (2007)
83 %
Reviews Counted: 18 Fresh: 15 Rotten:3 Average Rating: 7.3/10
Runtime: 1 hr 34 mins
Synopsis: Jack Smith was a legendary figure on the New York avant garde art scene, and his FLAMING CREATURES is rightly hailed as a masterpiece in its field. This documentary gives an overview of Smith's incredible career. [More]
Genre: Education/General Interest
Starring: John Waters, Ken Jacobs, Judith Malina, Jonas Mekas, Maria Montez
Reviews
1 - 19 (sorted by date; UK critics are listed first)
Top Critic
Mary Jordan's documentary Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis is part unsparing explication of a life story, part love-stuck personification of Smith's working philosophy.
11/30/07
Top CriticClick to read the article
04/25/07
Top Critic
It's the only place you'll find clips of his notorious masterpiece Flaming Creatures (1963), and for that alone it's worth seeing.
04/19/07
If modern art-lovers want to understand what the Jack Smith experience was like, Jordan's documentary may be their best chance.
04/14/07
This invaluable record contains a treasure trove of clips from Smith's hard-to-see and still striking films, plus comments that were culled from hours of interviews with this flamboyant pioneer.
04/13/07
There is invaluable material here, but also a lack of context for the wonderfully outre footage.
04/12/07
Alternately bizarre and inspired, but an appropriate tribute to an uncompromisingly experimental innovator in the field of cinema.
04/12/07
An intriguing, and profoundly frustrating, view of the New York underground hero.
04/11/07
The intoxicating documentary Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis, directed by Mary Jordan, is a love poem to the New York City of the '50s and '60s, when Smith, the visionary of camp, more or less invented performance art.
04/11/07
Thank heavens for Mary Jordan's vibrant, funny and tragic documentary, an entertaining hodgepodge of artifacts and impressions of a "creature" whose influence on photography, drama, film and art is still felt today.
04/11/07
It's gratifying when an influential underground artist is profiled in an accessible documentary. For that reason alone, Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis is worth seeing.
04/11/07
Top Critic
In some ways Smith's art became commodified only after he died and his estranged sister gained control over his work, though that did lead to this documentary, a fascinating introduction to his special world.
04/10/07
Helmer Mary Jordan does an extraordinary job sorting through extensive material and gathering a who's who of collaborators and disciples, offering an insightful and incisive portrait of a self-destructive paranoid artist.
04/10/07
Top Critic
Smith's own work, here montaged for easy digestion, is already too rich and sumptuous to require any further frosting.
04/10/07
In Jordan’s documentary you see the roots of camp as distinctly melancholy and yearning, a world of the spirit that can never be made flesh.
04/09/07
The film tries a little too fastidiously to piece together a life its owner tried quite brazenly to shatter.
04/09/07
1 - 19 (sorted by date; UK critics are listed first)
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