Nine American Film Critics
Lawson, Steve
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 be...
...The Agee and Warshow chapters rehash general consensus...
...Let us, therefore, examine Kauffmann's taste" . . "Sundry pages could be written" " . "One rarely has the feeling--as one has so often with Kael-- that he is deliberately lifting a knee to another critic's groin...
...And this peculiar critical hall of justice makes the samefauxpas as the one Sarris is accused of...
...where quotations often expose a spurious assertion better than detailed analysis ever could--but after a while one longs for just a little personal interpretation, however Murrayesque...
...Simon calls Young's Cinema Borealis "erratic but fascinating," and Mur- ray chimes in: "Simon is right...
...But for every good point Murray makes, he stumbles into obtuseness elsewhere...
...and goes on to throw in a few out-of- context gibes at one of Simon's books...
...For three years a national committee has been camping to have this Marion Control Unit dosed end preventthe establishment of similar units eisewttere...
...Evaluating the current standard is tough enough...
...Send to GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING, Rm...
...viction depending less on individual merit than on "convincing" details marshaled to put things in the warmest or worst light...
...02116, Married Priests NEEDED: MARRIED PRIEST COUPLES for a nationwide re- search study...
...Gifts for this vital project should be sent to: KO- REAN RELIEF, INC., P.O...
...5, 308 Boytston St., Bo~ton, MA...
...There's a great deal of quoting used to make a triumphant (minor) point...
...For box nurnbem add 60c per inaedton...
...It is 80 successful in producing human olsorientation as to serve sea po~lble model for other prisons...
...For a skillful putdown of Sarris's criticism, you can read a few pages in Dwight Macdonald's On Movies...
...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 The evidence of Simon's books (ln-gmar Bergman Directs aside) indicates that he hates "what is ugly or false" more than he loves "what is beautiful and true...
...66c, three times...
...The irritation is more than occa- sional, possibly stemming from the sensibil- ity Nine American Film Critics exudes--more legalistic than aesthetic...
...To which one is compelled to respond: Nonsense...
...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...
...His latest book is Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Empire, 1767-1821 (Harper & Row...
...The book in toto isn't: it omits Kauffmann's Living Images and Kael's award-winning Reeling, to cite two recent anthologies...
...10016...
...Anything You Contend, I'll Deny Louder...
...utopia $2...
...Because the whole chapter on Tyler is thrown in for straw-man purposes to demonstrate Murray can ,be as harsh as any of the writers he's evaluating...
...Conffibutlona to support this campaign are urgently needed by the NATIONAL COMMITI"EE TO SUP- PORT THE MARION BROTHERS, 4556A Oakland, St...
...I can't remember another critical study in which almost half the content--by my calculations-is made up of direct quotes...
...Stanley Kauffmann admires Anton- ioni, but "is much less rewarding to study...
...Ckwsffied payable with order...
...the fact re- mains, though, that he does not like Swe- den...
...SAUL MALOFF, whose last book was Heartland, is completing a political memoir of the Fifties...
...Marion 13s'othes's At Marion Federal Pr~on m lUlnois the use of physicat and psycho~ical behavior control units arouses extxeme resent- merit...
...the Simon section is less revealing, both for its strident attacks and scattered grudging praise, than Simon's own reviews are...
...Is this an indictment...
...COMMONWEAL, 232 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y...
...that Pauline Kael foolishly vacillates between an elitist stance and a populist, anti- art position...
...Although it is only fair to add that Young's study/s a book...
...Just about anybody.9 in con- temporary culture will be stimulated, fasci- nated, and--we might as well admit-- occasionally irritated'by Mr...
...No other American film critic is harder to please...
...Is being hard on filmmak- ers translatable into "less rewarding...
...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...
...Box 2151, Washington, D.C., 20013...
...MICHAEL ZEIK is a member of the faculty of Marymount College, Tarrytown, New York...
...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...
...why, then, does Mur- ray describe them for four pages, no less...
...Os-owing Without Schooling S~HOOLS TERRIBLE...
...What's the problem?Much of the book is accurate, as far as it goes...
...trumpets the publisher's blurb on the book jacket...
...I agree that Andrew Sands often blithely confuses "evidence" with "bald assertions...
...And he is particularly adept at evoking the oeuvre of critics he basically admires--Dwight Macdonald, Stanley Kauffmann and Vernon Young...
...Read "Growing W'AhoutSchooling," $10/6 issues...
...confusing concrete facts with secondhand assumptions...
...60c, twelve times...
...Murray's recapitulation of the infa- mous auteur theory is on target, if slightly warmed-over...
...It seems never to have occurred to Murray that there's a lot more tO hate than love in film as in any art, or that relating a problematic work to its director's past career might entail more space than a discreet review of a very different film...
...Classified RATES: 70c a word, one time...
...A prosecutorial temperament, the professor's: constantly collecting evidence, building an uneasy case, driving toward acquittal or conAN APPEAL "Giristown of Pusan" Father Aloysius Schwartz and his hundred Mariahive Sisters care for some 1900 abandoned children in Seoul alone...
...One doesn't have to dislike these Writers--they're three of my favorites as well--to argue that such in- cense was not quite the raison d' ~tre of the over-all book...
...Music NEW Catalog, $1.00: Eady Mu~c Stands, Drawer 510, P.O, Box 277, Palo Alto, CA 94302...
...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...
...Who has...
...Nor is Murray's style much help...
...If I wanted to be generous and good- heaRed, I might callNine American Film Cri- tics significant, timely, and definitive...
...Alas .9...
...Also, what's new...
...Louis, Mo, 63110...
...Parker Tyler's recent books "are so bad as to be beyond description or belief...
...Commonweah 703...
...And that "certainly a masterpiece" be- trays a slight bias on our author's part, too...
...monthly in advance for more than three times...
...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...
...on the remaining major directors...
...This Old High Academic has a stupefying effect: the reader sees a clich6 or a tautology coming and has no way of defend- ing himself...
...Contect M.H-R...
...Now he seeks to build "a decent home" for the 300 orphan girls now housed in 15 dangerously dilapidated cottages in Pu- san...
...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...
...This works now and then-especially in the case of Sarris...
...His most recent book is Blessed Rage for Order...
...Funds are urgently needed...
...Books OUT OF PRINT BOOKFINDER, Box 5842C, High Point, N.C...
...STEVE LAWSON has written for The New Republic, Horizon, American Film and The Nation...
...27262...
...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...
...the: Tyler, as I've said, is gratuitous nastiness', Which leaves Murray's three living, favorites-- Kauffmann, Young, and Macdonald--and a 91-page book (The Three Best) American Film Critics...
...Compare, for example, (Kauffmann's) favorable but rather dull assessment of lkiru--certainly a masterpiece--with his energetic review of Blow-Up, a pic- ture which at the time of its release he liked less than any of Antonioni's ef- forts since L'Avventura...
...That is, if we're lucky...
...that James Agee's innate honesty tended to collide with his un- quenchable enthusiasm for the movies qua movies...
...FATHER DAVID TRACY is associate professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School...
...Murray's views...
...For an accurate evaluation of Kael's writing, there's Richard Gilman's "Village Voice" article of a year or two ago, or the late Charles T. .9Samuel's still-relevant 1970 review of Going Steady inThe New York Times...
...935 Garfield St., Denver, 80206 by November 15...
...REVIEWERS ROBERT V. REMINI teaches history at the University of Illinois...
...ROBERT PHILLIPS'S books include The Confessional Poets and The Pregnant ~lan (Doubleday...
...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...
...Send wants or send stamps for catalog...
...I hereby suggest that Professor Murray form his own critical society (perhaps the Clique of Chalk, or the Lambaster's League) because, on the evidence of this volume--much sound, much fury, but sig- nifying very little-he's an ideal candidate...
...BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON is the author of Visions of Glory: A History and Memory of Jehovah's Witnesses (Simon and Schus- ter...
...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...
...63c,, six times...
...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...
Vol. 105 • October 1978 • No. 21
