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Post by William Smith on Jun 24, 2017 10:48:06 GMT -5
How many of us really love to read criticism? For many, this is the face of the critic:
The opposite point of view, of course: "Those of you who do not read, attend the theater, listen to unsponsored radio programs, or know anything of the world in which you live, it is perhaps necessary to introduce myself. My name is Addison DeWitt. My native habitat is the theater. In it, I toil not, neither do I spin. I am a critic and commentator. I am essential to the theater."
For theater, read the arts. I incline to the DeWitt point of view.
A rich topic: which critical theories work for film, and which do not? Favorite, and not so favorite, critics, past and present. Should a reviewer (particularly a quote whore, the sort who trumpets "I laughed, I cried, the first great film of 2017" solely to be mentioned in advertisements) be considered a critic?
Let me start with a topic--Manny Farber. I've started to work my way through his collected criticism, and I find it very odd indeed. Any thoughts on Farber?
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pom
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Post by pom on Jul 19, 2017 8:21:15 GMT -5
The problem is, with the rise of social media, anyone can claim to be a critic. Newspaper or even magazine critics just do not have the kind of power that they used to. When was the last time the modern masses listened to what a professional critic had to say about a film? My guess is Roger Ebert, but that's only because of his popular television show with Gene Siskel. That's not to denigrate Ebert's writing abilities or his taste, but he was probably the last critic who made any kind of an impression on the masses.
One thing about Farber: he really hated Kazan's Streetcar. Do you have a link to his collected works on hand?
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Post by William Smith on Jul 19, 2017 14:22:40 GMT -5
Better. The complete film criticism is available as follows: www.amazon.com/Farber-Film-Complete-Writings-Publication/dp/1598534696/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1500490816&sr=1-1&keywords=manny+farber
I snagged a near mint copy of the OOP hardcover on eBay.
There is a great deal of material Farber didn't like. I have only gotten though the early 1940s so far, and so haven't gotten to the essay on "termite art" versus "white elephant art". Like Truffaut and Goddard, he disliked the American equivalent of the cinema de qualite--the well-made, traditional film. In one significant respect, his view on the elements of cinema is about 180 degrees from mine, in that he considers the script far less important than the image.
Here are a couple of paragraphs from the essay that somewhat illustrate the ideas.
An exemplar of white elephant art, particularly the critic-devouring virtue of filling every pore of the work with glinting, darting Style and creative Vivacity, is François Truffaut. Shoot The Piano Player and Jules Et Jim, two ratchety perpetual-motion machines devised by a French Rube Goldberg [leave behind] the bladelike journalism of The 400 Blows.
The common quality or defect which unites apparently divergent artists like Antonioni, Truffaut, [Tony] Richardson, is fear, a fear of the potential life, rudeness, and outrageousness of a film. Coupled with their storage vaults of self-awareness and knowledge of film history, this fear produces an incessant wakefulness.
And termite art:
Good work usually arises where the creators [here he cites Laurel and Hardy, and Hawks] seem to have no ambitions towards gilt culture but are involved in a kind of squandering-beaverish endeavor that isn’t anywhere or for anything. A peculiar fact about termite-tapeworm-fungus-moss art is that it goes always forward eating its own boundaries, and, likely as not, leaves nothing in its path other than the signs of eager, industrious, unkempt activity.
[John Wayne in John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance] is a termite actor focusing only on a tiny present area, nibbling at it with engaging professionalism and a hipster sense of how to sit in a chair leaned against the wall, eye a flogging overactor (Lee Marvin)….Better Ford films than this have been marred by a phlegmatically solemn Irish personality that goes for rounded declamatory acting, silhouetted riders along the rim of a mountain with a golden sunset behind them…[in other words, white elephant art]
Personally, I think it's nonsense. (It is interesting to note that Farber, apparently, invented the term underground film.) It is somewhat ironic that Truffaut, in his own films, falls more toward the traditional mode of French cinema, but transformed by other ingredients. The poetic realism of Renoir, to my eyes, is excessively sentimental. Carne's Les Enfants du Paradis is far less so; it's more honest. Truffaut is more ironic, I think, in large part because of the influence of Hitchcock. It would be an interesting exercise to watch Les Enfants de Paradis and La Nuit Americaine (Day For Night) together. There is a great deal of similarity.
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Post by cavaradossi on Nov 30, 2017 14:29:53 GMT -5
I enjoyed reading Pauline Kael and bought most of the book collections of her reviews over the years. Another critic I rather enjoyed, if only for his acidic writing, was John Simon. I could only ever discover one volume of his reviews, but I grabbed it off the university bookstore shelf when I spotted it. Simon seemed to despise anything, and I mean anything, made in Hollywood, or like unto it. A film only had any worth if it came from Europe or Japan. This seemed to be a rule with Simon, and one either agreed with it or learned to tolerate it. I was in the latter category.
I enjoyed Roger Elbert's criticism, not least because he had a way of getting me interested in seeing films of which I'd never heard. On the other hand, I was surprised to find myself in disagreement with him on more than a few occasions. I still miss Kael, Simon, and Ebert. I haven't read many film reviews in recent years that came up to their standards.
There was another film reviewer from back then who had apparently been around for quite some time. He was highly respected, and I bought at least two volumes of his collected reviews. I wish I could remember his name now. I found him harder to pin down as a critic than Kael, Simon, and Elbert, though he made for interesting reading.
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