An Ethnic at Large
Maloff, Saul
danced than lived. If"ethnicity" '( that insuf- ferable bit of sociologese) is truly to signify, then its imprint on mind and spirit must be meticulously traced; the distinction must make, and...
...John Simon's ostensible vendetta against homely actors is dragged out for another whacking, with no effort made to comprehend Simon's (often explained) reasons...
...Is this an indictment...
...What's the problem?Much of the book is accurate, as far as it goes...
...the distinction must make, and be shown to make, a great differ- ence, or it is only a splash of local color, Mangione has written well and feelingly of ~~ the ancestral homeland (in Mount Allegro and elsewhere in his work--he has also written valuably on the Federal Writers' Project...
...but his memoir properly belongs to an altogether distinct genre: that of the homespun provina tn cial coming up from some south or down from the highlands or inform a colony across the sea (or from the "wrong" part of town)- some Midi or Scotland or Ireland, Brownsville or Ohio or the South side of Chicago--and makes his mark in the great metropolis, the only reckoning that matters, For his more modest purposes, Mangione might just as well have been a Jew, a Black, a Mid-westerner, a Laplander, any plucky boy from the hinterlands winning out by vir- tue of native wit, talent, energy, ambition...
...that James Agee's innate honesty tended to collide with his un- quenchable enthusiasm for the movies qua movies...
...For this and other offenses, Simon simply isn't a critic "who thus far has shown the capability for raising the standard of motion pictures...
...On the same page, I was equally baffled by Mur- ray's assertion that "it is difficult to locate an evaluation" in Kauffmann's Passion of Anna piece, which warmly praised that Bergman film...
...that Pauline Kael foolishly vacillates between an elitist stance and a populist, anti- art position...
...Since I'm in the position of criticizing this book, however, just as it's set up to criticize its various siring ducks, honesty compels me t6 brand it musty, outdated, and erratic...
...on the remaining major directors...
...I agree that Andrew Sands often blithely confuses "evidence" with "bald assertions...
...Evaluating the current standard is tough enough...
...Edward Murray, a university film teacher, has had the honorable impulse to gather the opinions and credos of"nine leading critics" into one volume, interweaving his own judg- ments with theirs in a critique of criticism as practiced, by this cinematic Supreme' Court...
...No other American film critic is harder to please...
...Stanley Kauffmann admires Anton- ioni, but "is much less rewarding to study...
...Who has...
...Murray's recapitulation of the infa- mous auteur theory is on target, if slightly warmed-over...
...the fact re- mains, though, that he does not like Swe- den...
...There is some succinct sum-marizing: "Warshow seems not to have had too much respect for art" . . . Kael is "Godardian in her love for spontaneity and improvisation" . . . "Young's ethnological approach.., is of great value...
...The film professor as prosecutor r~ n 8in|n||nnle l I" I - I l l NINE ANERICAN FILN CRITICS: A STUDY OF THEORY AND PRACTICE Edward Murray Ungar, $9.50 [256 pp.] Steve Lawson A MERICAN film criticism--the more I read of it--is analogous to a series of elite little clubs (Auteur Gang, Sociological Soci- ety, Pluralistic Boys, Ethnological Elks) in u which the members, rather than shushing each other and rattling their newspapers, vie to create the biggest noise and read their latest pronouncements at the top of their lungs...
...And he is particularly adept at evoking the oeuvre of critics he basically admires--Dwight Macdonald, Stanley Kauffmann and Vernon Young...
...We would certainly use a book analyzing the in- fluence of Age.e, Warshow, Kael, Simon, Sarris, Tyler, Kauffmann, Macdonald, and Young--but Professor Murray's isn't it...
...And the author seems amazed by the idea that a critic might find it profitable to write at greater length about a fl~awed or failed film than about a masterpiece: 27 October 1978:702...
...But for every good point Murray makes, he stumbles into obtuseness elsewhere...
...If I wanted to be generous and good- heaRed, I might callNine American Film Cri- tics significant, timely, and definitive...
...Is being hard on filmmak- ers translatable into "less rewarding...
...Anything You Contend, I'll Deny Louder...
Vol. 105 • October 1978 • No. 21
