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AuthorSHABAD, THEODORE
AuthorShafer, F.
AuthorSHAHANI, P. N.
AuthorSHAHANI, RANJEE
AuthorSHAHN, BEN
AuthorShainack, William
AuthorShanessy, J. C.
AuthorSHANKER, ALBERT
AuthorSHANNON, DAVID
AuthorSHANOR, DONALD
AuthorSHANOR, DONALD R .
AuthorSHANOR, DONALD R.
AuthorSHAPIRO, Arthur M.
AuthorSHAPIRO, EUGENE L. MEYER \ HARVEY D.
AuthorSHAPIRO, HANSJUERGEN ROSENBAUER \ DONALD R. SHANOR \ RAY ALAN \ MICHAEL BERGER \ HARVEY D.
AuthorSHAPIRO, HARVEY
AuthorSHAPIRO, HARVEY D.
AuthorSHAPIRO, PAULA MEINETZ
AuthorSHAPLEN, JOSEPH
AuthorShaplen, Robert
AuthorSHARGEL, RAPHAEL
AuthorSHARLET, ROBERT
AuthorSHARPE, KENNETH E.
AuthorSHARPIRO, HARVEY D.
AuthorSHARTS, JOSEPH W.
AuthorSHATTAN, JOSEPH
AuthorSHATTEN, FRITZ
AuthorShaw, Bernard
AuthorSHAW, BRUNO
AuthorSHAW, KINN WEI
AuthorSHAW, PETER
AuthorSHECHNER, MARK
AuthorSHEFFER, ISAIAH
AuthorSheilds, Art
AuthorSHELDON", "HENRY M. CHRISTMAN, G. M. LANZILOTTI, COURTNEY
AuthorSHELDON, BICKNELL EUBANKS, COURTNEY R.
AuthorSHELDON, COURTNEY
AuthorSheldon, Courtney R.
AuthorSHELDON, COURTNEY R.
AuthorSHELDON, FRANK MANKIEWICZ, COURTNEY R.
AuthorSHELDON, JOSEPH KAHN, COURTNEY
AuthorSHELLEY, LOUISE I.
AuthorSHENITZ, BRUCE
AuthorShenk, Fritz
AuthorSHENKER, ISRAEL
AuthorSHEPARD, RICH ARD F.
AuthorSHEPHERD, GEORGE W. Jr.
AuthorSHEPLEY, JOHN
AuthorSHEPPARD, RON
AuthorSHERMAN, A.V.
AuthorSherman, Aleph V.
AuthorSHERMAN, ALFRED
AuthorSHERMAN, ARNOLD
AuthorSherwin, Mark
AuthorSHESTACK, JEROME J.
AuthorShields, Art
AuthorSHIFUY, JOSEPH T.
AuthorSHIH, HU
AuthorSHILS, EDWARD
AuthorSHILS, EDWARD A.
AuthorShipey, Joseph T.
AuthorShiplacoff, A. I.
AuthorSHIPLER, GUY EMERY Jr.
AuthorShipley, By Joseph T.
AuthorSHIPLEY, JOSEPH
AuthorSHIPLEY, JOSEPH I.
AuthorShipley, Joseph T
AuthorShipley, Joseph T .
AuthorSHIPLEY, JOSEPH T.
AuthorShiply, Joseph T.
AuthorSHLEIFER, ANDREI
AuthorShoaf, George H.
AuthorSHORE, SAMUEL
AuthorSHORRIS, EARL
AuthorSHORT, GEORGE
AuthorShort, Wallace M.
AuthorSHORTER, KiNCSLEY
AuthorSHORTER, KINGSLEY
AuthorSHOUT, JONATHAN
AuthorSHTEIR, RACHEL
AuthorSHUB", "DIANA TRILLING, RAYMOND ROSENTHAL, ANATOLE
AuthorSHUB, ANATOLE
AuthorSHUB, BORIS
AuthorSHUB, DAVID
AuthorSHUB, DAVID J. DALLIN, ANATOLE
AuthorShubert., Lee and J. J.
AuthorSHUCK, L. EDWARD Jr.
AuthorShulman, Frederick
AuthorShulman, Lester M.
AuthorSHULMAN, MARSHALL D.
AuthorSHUSTER, GEORGE N.
AuthorSHUSTER, S. M. LEVITAS: SIDNEY HOOK AND GEORGE
AuthorSIEGAL, JOHN
AuthorSIEGEL, FRED
AuthorSIEGEL, LEE
AuthorSifton, Paul
AuthorSIFTON, PAUL F.
AuthorSIGEL, EFREM
AuthorSIGMAN, MORRIS
AuthorSIGMUND, PAUL
AuthorSIGMUND, PAUL E.
AuthorSiler, Ruth
AuthorSilin, Robert G.
AuthorSILK, LEONARD
AuthorSILONE, IGNACIO
AuthorSILONE, IGNASIO
AuthorSILONE, IGNAZIO
AuthorSILVER, ISIDORE
AuthorSilverarin, Louis
AuthorSilverstein, Louis
AuthorSilverstein, Louis S.
AuthorSilverstein, Louis Stanley
AuthorSIMES, DIMITRI K.
AuthorSimmons, Anne
AuthorSIMMONS, JOHN D.
AuthorSIMON, JOHN
Paid articleMusic to Your Eyes (January 2006)
On Music Music to Your Eyes By John Simon The New Leader was a home base for me. At different times since 1961 I was its film, theater or culture critic, and I frequently...
Paid articleON MUSIC (November 2005)
On Music Henze's Dance of Death By John Simon Over the years, my attitude toward Hans Werner Henze's music has fluctuated wildly. Henze and I were more or less coevals, which may have...
Paid articleOn Music (September 2005)
On Music See Venice and Die By John Simon THERE IS SOMETHING very moving about an artist's last work. It matters little whether the work was finished, whether the artist was young or...
Paid articleMore than an Anthill (July 2005)
On Music More than an Anthill By John Simon IN his autobiography. Bygones, the poet-anthologist Louis Untermeyer reports that Ezra Pound "groaned when I relayed the quip about piling up...
Paid articleThirteen to Remember (May 2005)
On Music Thirteen to Remember By John Simon Call IT damage control or catching up or an omniumgatherum, but it is intermittently necessary to direct attention to some...
Paid articleBlowing Gabriel's Horn (March 2005)
On Music Blowing Gabriel's Horn By John Simon IN 19501 was a Fulbright scholar ostensibly studying at the Sorbonne, but actually learning from the City of Paris, which, as Rabelais...
Paid articleA Ruined Life, a Salvaged Dinner (February 2005)
On Music A Ruined Life, a Salvaged Dinner By John Simon NOT SO LONG AGO, in 1971, Paul Henry Lang wrote in Tiie Experience of Opera, "Janâcek's Jenûfa, very popular all over Central Europe,...
Paid articleShostakovich and the Politics of Survival (November 2004)
On Music Shostakovich and the Politics of Survival By John Simon IT is fruitful to speculate about why we want our artists to be "good" persons. This is more or less understandable—which is...
Paid articleON MUSIC (September 2004)
On Music A Golden Achievement By John Simon It is possible for an opera with a weak libretto to be saved by powerful music. The usual example is Verdi's fi trovatore, with its endless...
Paid articleOn Music (July 2004)
On Music Homage to a Catalan By John Simon Some years ago I wrote here briefly about the marvelous orchestral music of the superb Catalan composer Xavier Montsalvatge (1912-2002). Now...
Paid articleOn Music (May 2004)
On Music Beauty from Belgium By John Simon A correlation exists between a country's size and importance and the number of major artists it produces. The former Yugoslavia and...
Paid articleOn Music (March 2004)
On Music Operas in Waiting By John Simon Talent tends to be homogeneous and complacent; genius, complex, contradictory, riven. Take the extraordinary Czech composer Bohuslav Martinù...
Paid articleOn Music (January 2004)
On Music Channel Crossings By John Simon THERE SEEMS to be a tacit conspiracy against modern British music in various countries, ours included. I have written here about Benjamin Britten...
Paid articleThe Composer as Clown (November 2003)
On Music The Composer as Clown By John Simon With most composers the artist is more important than the man; with Erik Satie it is rather the reverse. "In order to understand Satie's...
Paid articleJustice for Tcherepnin (September 2003)
On Music Justice for Tcherepnin By John Simon A family of composers is a rare and wonderful thing, especially inmodern times. Morepowerto the Tcherepnins: grandfather Nikolai...
Paid articleOn Music (July 2003)
On Music The Other Brazilian By John Simon If you have stocked up on recordings of Heitor Villa-Lobos, but haven't sated your appetite for the insinuating melodies and incandescent...
Paid articleBantock's Banter and Bravura (May 2003)
On Music Bantock's Banter and Bravura By John Simon If his distinguished surgeon father had prevailed, Sir Granville Bantock(1869-1946)wouldhave become a chemical engineer or Indian...
Paid articleChasing the Blahs with Blacher (March 2003)
On Music Chasing the Blahs with Blacher By John Simon It is frustrating to write about the German composer Boris Blacher(1903-75). Hehadstrong leanings toward the stage, with much opera,...
Paid articleA Modest Master (January 2003)
On Music A Modest Master By John Simon WHAT'S IN A NAME? The French composer Germaine Tailleferre (18921983) was born Germaine Marcelle Taillefesse, but probably for the sake of...
Paid articleWeill Without Brecht (July 2002)
On Music Weill Without Brecht By John Simon As readers of this column must by now have figured out, my aim has been to introduce classical music lovers either to insufficiently known...
Paid articleOn Music (May 2002)
On Music The Sorrows of Shostakovich By John Simon Few things, if any, are harder to determine than the meaning of a piece of music. Absolute music, that is—not the setting of a text or,...
Paid articleOn Music (March 2002)
On Music Not Modern But Timely By John Simon Who was Alexandre Tansman (18971986)? Even some of my most musically sophisticated friends were stumped by the question. Born into an...
Paid articleOn Music (January 2002)
On Music An Enemy of Boredom By John Simon The recent excellent, and so far only, full-length biography of Gerald Hugh Tyrwhitt-Wilson is Mark Amory's Lord Berners: The Last Eccentric....
Paid articleOn Music (November 2001)
On Music Opera by the Pound By John Simon OPERA ATTRACTS the queerest ducks. Not all oddballs love opera, but many of the oddest adore it. One reason for this is that it is the most...
Paid articleOn Music (September 2001)
On music Women of Notes By John Simon WHY ARE THERE SO fewwomen composers of note? Have there not been through the ages more accomplished women than men on the piano, harpsichord,...
Paid articleOn Music (July 2001)
On Music The Conquistador of Composition By John Simon How many modern Spanish composers have achieved international stature? Isaac Albéniz and Enrique Granados, yes, though most people...
Paid articleOn Music (March 2001)
On Music Prokofiev's 'War and Peace' By John Simon A highly musical couple of my acquaintance used to debate assiduously about who was the greatest modern Russian composer, Sergei...
Paid articleOn Music (January 2001)
On Music Justice for Jacques Ibert By John Simon Who, exactly, are the worthy minor composers? The question is important, because in the entire 20th century there were probably no more...
Paid articleOn Music (November 2000)
On Music The Cosmopolitan American By John Simon America has had its share of fine composers, but when you start looking for great ones, two very different, indeed antithetical,...
Paid articleOn Music (September 2000)
On Music Britten's Billy Budd By John Simon Benjamin Britten (191376) has been one of my favorite composers ever since I was overwhelmed by a production of his Peter Grimes, probably the...
Paid articleOn Music (July 2000)
On Music Operas in Waiting By John Simon Why are theatergoers constantly on the lookout for something new, while operagoers revel in the same old war-horses and resist change in the...
Paid articleOn Music (March 2000)
On Music Poulenc's Deviltry and Dedication By John Simon French distinguishes between the art song, mélodie, and the popular song, chanson. The former is throughcomposed, i.e.,...
Paid articleOn Music (December 1999)
On Music LEADERS IN THE LIED By John Simon Although all cultures have their art songs, the German lied may well be the most famous: I once received a shipment of records addressed to The New...
Paid articleOn Music (November 1999)
On Music RAVEL REKINDLED By John Simon Just as short stories lag in popularity behind novels, one-act operas trail well behind full-length ones. In the standard repertoire only Cav and Pag,...
Paid articleOn Music (August 1999)
On Music SOME RECENT FAVORITES By John Simon In the piano concerto field you will not find a more exciting record than the one coupling two supreme Polish masterpieces: Karol Szymanowski's...
Paid articleOn Music (August 1999)
On Music FORTY-NINE DEADLY SINS By John Simon This year we are midway between two centenaries: 1998 was Lotte Lenya's; 2000 willbe that of her husband, Kurt Weill. There is something rare...
Paid articleOn Music (April 1999)
On Music THE PULL OF POULENC By John Simon How relative things are! The composer Ned Rorem, who knew Francis Poulenc (1899-1963) well, told me not long ago that when he now...
Paid articleMagnard Magnifique (November 1998)
On Music MAGNARD MAGNIFIQUE By John Simon Uniust neglect is easy to come by in the arts. The starving genius in his garret was a not unfounded cliché now supplanted by a half-truth: Real...
Paid articleSmall is Beautiful (October 1998)
On Music SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL By John Simon We have all heard about the declining market for classical music, both live and recorded, but chamber music seems to strike people as the most...
Paid articleThe Impossibility of Loving (August 1998)
On Music THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF LOVING By John Simon In the field of opera, I can find no more universal tragedy than Béla Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle to a libretto by Béla Balázs. The...
Paid articleLove Writes an Opera (May 1998)
On Music LOVE WRITES AN OPERA By John Simon Pierre Boulez once remarked in conversation that the only 20th-century composers of consequence were Bartok, Stravinsky, Schönberg, Berg, and...
Paid articleNot so Fragile Frederic (March 1998)
On Music NOT SO FRAGILE FREDERIC By John Simon British Music has had a tendency to sound a bit provincial: re-creating subdued British landscapes, rehashing early English composers,...
Paid articleThanks fot the 'Melodie' (February 1998)
On Music THANKS FOR THE 'MELODIE' By John Simon The French call an art song mélodie—not chanson, which would correspond to the English song and German Lied, but melodie. Does this...
Paid article'Ariadne' in Double Exposure (December 1997)
On Music ‘ARIADNE' IN DOUBLE EXPOSURE By John Simon ?n any short list of the greatest operas, room must be made for Ariadne auf Naxos, Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal's supreme...
Paid articleBittersweet Birdsong (October 1997)
On Music BITTERSWEET BIRDSONG By John Simon The most interesting CD series I know of is the ongoing one from London called Entartete Musik (Degenerate Music). That was the Nazis' name for...
Paid articleHow Good Is It? (December 1996)
How Good Is It? Shakespeare's Edward III Edited bv Eric Sams Yale. 242pp. $30.00. Reviewed by John Simon In 1596 Cuthbert Burby published an anonymous play bearing the title and legend, "The...
Paid articleBrodsky in Retrospect (September 1996)
WHters & Writitig BRODSKY IN RETROSPECT BY JOHN SIMON LAST JANUARY 28 Joseph Brodsky's heart gave out at age 55 The English language has proved hospitable to foreign prose writers as diverse as...
Paid articleLeaving the Best Unsaid (December 1995)
Leaving the Best Unsaid Not Entitled: A Memoir By Frank Kermode Farrar Straus Giroux. 263 pp. $23.00. Reviewed by John Simon IF ANY MAN should not have written an autobiography—or even a memoir,...
Paid articlePater Repatriated (June 1995)
Pater Repatriated Walter Pater: Lover of Strange Souls By Denis Donoghue Knopf. 364 pp. $27.50. Reviewed by John Simon AS A GRADUATE STUDENT at Harvard, I took a seminar in Victorian Criticism...
Paid articleVive la Difference (September 1995)
Vive la Difference In Defense of Elitism By William A. Henry III Doubleday. 212pp. $26.95. Reviewed by John Simon THREE THINGS can make writing a book review very difficult: total agreement...
Paid articleA Hapless Hybrid (October 1994)
A Hapless Hybrid Ingmar Bergman: Film and Stage By Robert Emmet Long Abrams. 208 pp. $45.00. Reviewed by John Simon ROBERT EMMET LONG has attempted the impossible: to produce something that...
Paid articleDiabolus in Musica (June 1994)
Diabolus in Musica Leonard Bernstein By Humphrey Burton Doubleday. 594 pp. $25.00. Reviewed by John Simon IT ISN'T EASY to write a biography of Leonard Bernstein, there having been so many...
Paid articleINSPIRED BY WIND AND WAVES (December 1993)
CultureWatching INSPIRED BY WIND AND WAVES BY JOHN SIMON A Jl. jL. merica inspires freedom in its artists. It was Walt Whitman, and not the French vers-libristes, who invented modern free verse;...
Paid articleUnraveling in Style (May 1993)
Unraveling in Style Delmore Schwartz and James Laughlin: Selected Letters Edited by Robert Phillips Norton. 382 pp. $29.95. Reviewed by John Simon The public's image of the poet—to the extent...
Paid articleFrom Words to Language (March 1993)
From Words to Language Word Menu By Stephen Glazier Random House. 977 pp. $22.00. The Oxford Companion to the English Language Edited by Tom McArthur Oxford. 1,184 pp. $45.00. Reviewed by John...
Paid articlePlay Softly and Wave a Short Stick (December 1992)
Play Softly and Wave a Small Stick A Life in Music By Daniel Barenboim Scribner's. 198 pp. $23.00. Reviewed by John Simon The first salient fact about Daniel Barenboim's quasi-autobiographical...
Paid articleQuite Contrary, Quite Right (June 1992)
Quite Contrary, Quite Right Intellectual Memoirs: New York 1936-1938 By Mary McCarthy Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. 114 pp. $15.95. Reviewed by John Simon What a wonderful yet sad book this is!...
Paid articleFor Browsers and Specialists Alike (December 1991)
For Browsers and Specialists Alike A Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory By J. A. Cuddon Blackwell. 1,051pp. $44.95. Reviewed by John Simon Tms book is not for everyone. But...
Paid articleNever Commit Verbicide (May 1991)
Culture Watching NEVER COMMIT VERBICIDE BY JOHN SIMON LANGUAGE, they say, is what sets us off from the animals. That "large discourse... that capability and godlike reason," Hamlet thought,...
Paid articleWhat Opera Can Do for You (April 1991)
What Opera Can Do for You Opera and Its Symbols: The Unity of Words, Music, and Staging By Robert Donington Yale. 248 pp. $29.95. Reviewed by John Simon What is opera? Why, despite its...
Paid articleLaura Riding and Her Traveling Circus (December 1990)
Laura Riding and Her Traveling Circus Robert Graves: The Years with Laura, 1926-1940 By Richard Perceval Graves Viking. 380 pp. $24.95. Reviewed by John Simon Forme, the Arch Poet of the...
Paid articleRandall Jarrell: Failure in Success (May 1990)
Culture Watching RANDALL JARRELL: FAILURE IN SUCCESS BY JOHN SIMON RANDALL Jarrell (1914-1965) was a second-rate poet and first-rate critic. Most people would have been satisfied with...
Paid articleThe Woman Behind the Songs (May 1989)
Culture Watching THE WOMAN BEHIND THE SONGS BY JOHN SIMON Lotte Lenya is known to those who care about 20th-century theater and music as the actresssinger married to Kurt Weill and...
Paid articleGenius Revealed and Reconfirmed (December 1988)
Genius Revealed and Reconfirmed Eugene O'Neill: Complete Plays Edited by Travis Bogard The Library of America. Volume One: 1913-1920. 1,104 pp. Volume Two: 1920-1931. 1,092 pp. Volume...
Paid articleSurvival of the Fictive (May 1988)
Survival of the Fictive The Art of the Novel By Milan Kundera Translated by Linda Asher Grove. 224 pp. $16.95. Six Memos for the Next Millennium By Italo Calvino Translated by Patrick...
Paid articleBrook in Print (December 1987)
Brook in Print The Shifting Point By Peter Brook Harper & Row. 254 pp. $22.50. The Mahabharata By Jean-Claude Carrière Translated by Peter Brook Harper & Row. 238 pp. $18.95. Reviewed...
Paid articleShort Run (May 1987)
Short Run The Orton Diaries Edited by John Lahr Harper & Row. 304 pp. $18.95. Reviewed by John Simon On the hit parade of salacious gossip, scandal in the world of the arts is right up...
Paid articleQuoth the Maven 'Evermore' (December 1986)
Quoth the Maven 'Evermore' A Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary: Volume IV, Se-Z Edited by R. W. Burchfield Oxford. 1,488 pp. $150.00. Reviewed by John Simon Contrary to popular...
Paid articleSpeaking Around Literature (August 1986)
Culture Watching SPEAKING AROUND LITERATURE BY JOHN SIMON This spring a " triangular encounter of Soviet, United States and Italian writers" took place— for two days in Palermo, and two in...
Paid articleMan Without a Face (April 1986)
Man Without a Face Blessings in Disguise By Alec Guinness Knopf. 238 pp. $17.95. Reviewed by John Simon Actors seem to be created for two purposes: to act and to tell anecdotes. The famous...
Paid articleSex and Syntax (March 1986)
Sex and Syntax Grammar and Gender By Dennis Baron Yale. 249 pp. $23.50. Reviewed by John Simon The stated purpose of Dennis Baron's Grammar and Gender is to "attempt to place the present debate...
Paid articleBodying Forth the Truth (December 1985)
Bodying Forth the Truth Monuments and Maidens: The Allegory of the Female Form By Marina Warner Atheneum. 417 pp. $25.00. Reviewed by John Simon Painstakingly researched, fulsome-ly...
Paid articleLife of an Antihero (June 1985)
Life of an Antihero_ The Kindness of Strangers: The Life of Tennessee Williams By Donald Spoto Little, Brown. 416 pp. $19.95. Tennessee: Cry of the Heart By Dotson Rader Doubleday. 288 pp....
Paid articleAssaying Harder (December 1984)
Assaying Harder_ The Penguin Book of Contemporary American Essays Edited by Maureen Howard Viking. 283 pp. $19.95. Reviewed by John Simon Pity the poor anthologist, for whatever he or she does...
Paid articleThe Patient in Number 13 (May 1984)
The Patient in Number 13 The Nightmare of Reason: A Life of Franz Kafka By Ernest Pawel Farrar, Straus, Giroux. 480pp. $25.50. Reviewed by John Simon Turn of-the-century Prague was, despite some...
Paid articleAn Unpleasant Charmer (December 1983)
An Unpleasant Charmer Brecht: A Biography By Ronald Hay man Oxford. 388 pp. $24.95. Reviewed by John Simon The paradigm of the artist as monster is Richard Wagner. This dubious honor should...
Paid articlePortrait of a Shallow Genius (May 1983)
Portrait of a Shallow Genius_ The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock By Donald Spoto Little, Brown 594 pp $20 00 Reviewed by John Simon The one time I had lunch with Francois...
Paid articleThe Politics of Literacy (December 1982)
The Politics of Literacy On Literacy By Robert Pattison Oxford University Press. 213 pp. $17.95. Reviewed by John Simon Robert Pattison's On Literacy is really two books in one. That is not,...
Paid articleA Legend in Her Time (August 1982)
A Legend in Her Time Lulu in Hollywood By Louise Brooks Knopf 209 pp $15 00 Reviewed by John Simon Let's face it, nothing succeeds like success cavalierly discarded Would all his poetry have...
Paid articleThe Lure of Words (May 1981)
The Lure of Wfords The Temptation of Saint Antony By Gustave Flaubert Translated with an Introduction and Notes by Kitty Mrosovksy Cornell 288 pp $17 50 Reviewed by John Simon In the...
Paid articleFrom Sensibility Toward Sense (December 1980)
From Sensibility Toward Sense_ Under the Sign of Saturn By Susan Son lag Farrar, Straus, Giroux. 204 pp. $10.95 Reviewed by John Simon According to an adage that often performs also as an...
Paid articleThe Last of the Vine (September 1980)
Writers & Writing THE LAST OF THE VINE BY JOHN SIMON With the publication of Kipling, Auden & Co. (Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 381 pp., $17.95) the fourth and final collection of Randall Jarrell's...
Paid articleBetween Meaning and Nonsense (August 1980)
Writers & Writing BETWEEN MEANING AND NONSENSE BY JOHN SIMON For the reader unmoved by the heady publicity that clings to the name of Roland Barthes like overinsistent perfume to a passing...
Paid articleOn Art (June 1980)
On Art SEEING PICASSO PLAIN by john simon D o not expect from me an orthodox review of Picasso: A Retrospective now at the Museum of Modern Art. That you can get from the New York Times alone...
Paid articleMore Simple than Love (May 1980)
More Simple than Love Great Friends By David Garnett Atheneum. 240 pp. $16.95. Reviewed by John Simon What is friendship? Socrates admitted, at the end of the Lysis, to "have not as yet been...
Paid articleA Woman of Parts (May 1980)
WHters &Wtiting AWQMAN OFB\RTS by john simon man. She was also an institution—perhaps, successively, three institutions—and, beyond that, the epitome of an age. Descended from a cello virtuoso...
Paid articleAdult Mind at Play (December 1979)
Adult Mind at Play A Lion for Love By Robert Alter Basic Books. 285 pp. $13.95. Reviewed by John Simon Nineteenth-century France, early and middle, produced in rapid succession the three...
Paid articleEminent Epistolarians (September 1979)
Writers&Writing EMINENT EPISTOLARIANS BY JOHN SIMON FRATERNIZATION between'' creative'' writers and critics usually follows this pattern Critic praises novelist's (or poet's, or playwright's)...
Paid articleCataloguing as Literature (June 1979)
Waiters &V\Hting CATALOGUING AS LITERATURE byjohn simon u C \J leepless Nights, A Novel by Elizabeth Hard-wick," says the jacket. Yet the book (Random House, 151 pp., $8.95) has little or...
Paid articleIrving Howe: A Triple Perspective (May 1979)
IRVING HOWE: A TRIPLE PERSPECTIVE BY JOHN SIMON Irving Howe is a one-man triumvirate. The first member is a Jewish belletrist, a student and translator of Yiddish literature, but also very much a...
Paid articleOn Making the Masterpiece (March 1979)
@On Making the Masterpiece The Composition of 'Four Quartets' By Helen Gardner Oxford. 239 pp. $32.50. Reviewed by John Simon Few 20th-century poets have elicited as much adoration as T. S....
Paid articleParadox Lost (December 1978)
Paradox Lost_ The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction By Michel Foucault Pantheon. 192pp. $8.95. Reviewed by John Simon Pronounce a truth. Pronounce its opposite, and you are still...
Paid articleA Woman's Fancy (May 1978)
A Woman's Fancy About Men By Phyllis Chester Simon & Schuster. 281 pp. $9.95. Reviewed by John Simon Phyllis Chesler's book is divided into three main parts. First, general reflections...
Paid articleLooking into the Camera (February 1978)
Writers & Writing LOOKING INTO THE CAMERA BY JOHN SIMON WHAT GOOD company Susan Sontag's mind is' There are writers whom we never want to read, no matter how fascinating their subjects may be...
Paid articleWords of Our Fathers (December 1977)
Words of Our Fathers Caught in the Web of Words By K. M. Elisabeth Murray Yale. 416 pp. $15.00. Reviewed by John Simon Would you expect the biography of a man who edited a dictionary to be...
Paid articleThe Composer as Critic (October 1977)
On Stage THE COMPOSER AS CRITIC BY JOHN SIMON This is a tribute to a man who, although he disclaimed being a critic, wrote dazzling snatches of criticism, and who, although principally a composer...
Paid articleThe Romantic Poles! (September 1977)
On Stage THOSE ROMANTIC POLES! BY JOHN SIMON One of the abiding riddles of literary criticism is why the Romantics could not write drama. Just about all of them, in every country, wanted to; and...
Paid articleTotting up the Critics (August 1977)
On Stage TOTTING UP THE CRITICS BY JOHN SIMON One of those perennial posers, "How much power do theater critics have?" rears its battered head again in two articles in the July/August issue of...
Paid articleWilde Off the Mark (August 1977)
On Stage WILDE OFF THE MARK BY JOHN SIMON The Circle in the Square has produced Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest in a way that rates their organization a name change to the Square in...
Paid articleTragic Waste (July 1977)
On Stage TRAGIC WASTE by john simon Tet's get the lesser disaster out of the way fast. When upon the success of The Threepenny Opera (1928) a producer requested a quick follow-up, Brecht and...
Paid articleWarmed-Over Vice and Innocence (June 1977)
On Stage WARMED-OVER VICE AND INNOCENCE by JOHN SIMON Poor Tennessee Williams! He is, or was, our greatest living playwright, second only to Eugene O'Neill at his best, and it is infinitely sad...
Paid articleThe Past Recaptured (May 1977)
On Stage THE PAST RECAPTURED? BY JOHN SIMON T JL^iv Ullmann's long-awaited Broadway debut has proved just as equivocal an affair as her long-awaited 1975 off-Broadway debut in A Doll's House at...
Paid articleDying, With or Without A Pulitzer (May 1977)
On Stage DYING, WITH OR WITHOUT A PULITZER BY JOHN SIMON THE Pulitzer Prize, surely one of the most meaningless awards in existence, has just been given to Michael Cristofer for his dismal play,...
Paid articleOn Stage (April 1977)
On Stage NOT ALL OLDIES ARE GOLDEN BY JOHN SIMON The Circle in the Square, after years of doing mostly modern American plays, has put on its first Shakespeare. Theodore Mann, the artistic...
Paid articleOn Stage (April 1977)
On Stage PLAYWRIGHT, LEARN WHERE TO STOP by john simon MUCH Is being made these days of Albert Innaurato, the young playwright—born in Philadelphia in 1948, holder of a 1974 MFA from Yale—who has...
Paid articleOn Stage (March 1977)
On Stage IF YOUTH BUT KNEW, IF AGE BUT COULD BY JOHN SIMON John Guare's latest, Marco Polo Sings a Solo, is, I am afraid, every bit as cute as its title. It takes place in the future, when an...
Paid articleOn Stage (March 1977)
On Stage DEADLY REVIVALS by JOHN SIMON should we laugh or weep at what is being done to Chekhov at Lincoln Center? Andrei Serban, the Rumanian avant-garde director who has found a home at La...
Paid articleA Certain Lack of Feeling (February 1977)
On Stage A CERTAIN LACK OF FEELING BY JOHN SIMON simon Gray, the clever English author of the deservedly successful Butley, is back with his latest London hit, Otherwise Engaged. The three main...
Paid articleSome Rise from Ashes, Some do not (February 1977)
On Stage SOME RISE FROM ASHES, SOME DO NOT BY JOHN SIMON AFTER ITS successful Offoff-Broadway run at the Manhattan Theater Club, Ashes, by the Anglo-Irish playwright David Rudkin, has just...
Paid articleFooling Around (January 1977)
On Stage FOOLING AROUND by JOHN SIMON I was one of those few people not particularly taken with Fiddler on the Roof when it first conquered Broadway. I found it cutesy and mawkish by turns, with...
Paid articleA Sheep in Fox's Clothing (January 1977)
On Stage A SHEEP IN FOX'S CLOTHING BY JOHN SIMON what is there about Ben Jonson's Volpone that compels people to rewrite it? Why has so fine a play so steadily prqyoked a rage to improve it,...
Paid articleTwo From Williams' Menagerie (January 1977)
On Stage Two'from williams' Menagerie by John Simon What gives The Night of the Iguana a special position in Tennessee Williams' oeuvre is that it is his last decent play. Not great, surely;...
Paid articleOn Stage (December 1976)
On Stage AMATEUR NIGHTS BY JOHN SIMON DUBLIN'S ABBEY Theater began a tour of America last month at the Brooklyn Academy of Music with a production of Sean O'Casey's The Plough and the Stars. An...
Paid articleOn Stage (December 1976)
On Stage 'PORGY' AND LESS BY JOHN SIMON The revival of Porgy and Bess has rekindled heated critical discussion of whether this beloved work is in fact an opera or merely a musical. A folk opera...
Paid articleOn Stage (November 1976)
On Stage GOOD NIGHT, SWEET PRINCE BY JOHN SIMON LITERARY HISTORY, said Heine, is the great morgue where everyone seeks out the dead he loves or to whom he is related. Heinrich von Kleist, like...
Paid articleOn Stage (October 1976)
On Stage A TEXAS TAUTOLOGY BY JOHN SIMON Things get lost when you are moving. I have just moved into a new apartment and cannot find my programs with notes on the plays I am reviewing. But that...
Paid articleOn Stage (October 1971)
On Stage GOOD GEORG AND GIORGIO, BAD JORGE BY JOHN SIMON Opera is, among other things, theater; as such, it needs to be staged effectively, even if the primary emphasis is rightly placed on...
Paid articleOn Stage (September 1976)
On Stage DUDES AND CHICKS BY JOHN SIMON Right after Pal Joey—in my view the greatest American musical comedy—comes Guys and Dolls. Both have been revived recently. The Pal Joey that Ted...
Paid articleOn Stage (August 1976)
On Stage OUR WORDS AS THEY SPEAK US BY JOHN SIMON David Mamet, at 28, is a playwright to watch and listen to. What we watch for is his future; what we listen to is his present. As of now, Mamet...
Paid articleOn Stage (August 1976)
On Stage ONCE MORE UNTO THE BREACH BY JOHN SIMON c Curious indeed are the vagaries of our theater. Years may pass between productions in New York of Shakespeare's Henry V; then, all of a sudden...
Paid articleOn Stage (July 1976)
On Stage suite" for brash instruments BY JOHN SIMON Having moved to Los Angeles for reasons he did not make entirely clear—but presumably on the supposition that in the country of the blind the...
Paid articleOn Stage (July 1976)
On Stage 'ENUF' IS NOT ENOUGH BY JOHN SIMON The fuss that is being made over For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf, now at Joseph Papp's Public Theater, is both...
Paid articlePlaywright's Progress (June 1976)
On Stage PLAYWRIGHT'S PROGRESS by john simon lf one had to pick the young playwright of our time most likely to succeed—now that the Shepards, Guares, Horovitzes, McNallys and the rest who looked...
Paid articleOn Stage (May 1976)
On Stage HENRY V, HENRY VIII, HENRY JAMES BY JOHN SIMON The Royal Shakespeare Company's centenary production of Henry V has come to Brooklyn on the first leg of an international tour. It raises...
Paid articleOn Stage (May 1976)
On Stage BICENTENNIAL BYWAYS BY JOHN SIMON T HE Bicentennial mania for rediscovering neglected gems of American drama is creating a plethora of Brigadoons. I don't mean the Lerner-Loewe musical,...
Paid articleOn Stage (April 1976)
On Stage CRYING WOOLF BY JOHN SIMON over 13 years ago, in The New Leader of October 24, 1962, I wrote a guest drama review of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? It was largely...
Paid articleOn Stage (April 1976)
On Stage LOST LADIES BY JOHN SIMON Starting in 1877, when he produced Pillars of Society, Ibsen was to turn out one of his great, late plays every two years. The exceptions were An Enemy of the...
Paid articleOn Stage (March 1976)
On Stage NEW BABEL, OLD HARLEM by john simon srael Horovitz is one of our brighter young playwrights, and The Primary English Class shows him at work in his more recent, semiabsurdist mode. This...
Paid articleOn Stage (March 1976)
On Stage PAPP FAILS THE TEST BY JOHN SIMON Joseph Papp has followed up his disastrous Hamlet at the Vivian Beaumont Theater, starring Sam Waterston, with a no less catastrophic production of...
Paid articleOn Stage (March 1976)
On Stage AGING BADLY BY JOHN SIMON N Now the Phoenix Theater has joined in the Bicentennial madness and hauled out Sidney Howard's They Knew What They Wanted, a typical product of the '20s and...
Paid articleOn Stage (February 1976)
On Stage YES, BUT WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN? BY JOHN SIMON Jules Feiffer's first play, Little Murders, had something to tell us about the growing urban violence and trauma. Neither his script for...
Paid articleOn Stage (February 1976)
On Stage FROM NOSTALGIA TO EXOTICISM BY JOHN SIMON the theater, at least, there ought to be two different words for new productions of old works. Clearly, if some classic play by Shakespeare or...
Paid articleOn Stage (January 1976)
On Stage WILLIAMS IN DOUBLE EXPOSURE BY JOHN SIMON Asked by a captious examiner to name the three phases of Shakespeare's dramaturgy, a bright college friend of mine answered: "Early, middle and...
Paid articleOn Stage (January 1976)
On Stage OF SONGS AND SEX BY JOHN SIMON A COUPLE of unfortunate musical offerings are of interest mainly as object lessons. A Musical Jubilee, devised^ by Marilyn Clark and Charles Burr, is...
Paid articleOn Stage (December 1975)
On Stage THEATER BESIDE ITSELF BY JOHN SIMON Tom Stoppard is with us again, clever as always, and just as frustrating. Travesties has all the wit, ingenuity, theatricality, sophistication you...
Paid articleOn Stage (September 1975)
On Stage FITS AND STARTS BY JOHN SIMON The current strike-ridden theater season opened hesitantly, with many delays. Circle in the Square began it with a revival of Ah, Wilderness!, Eugene...
Paid articleOn Stage (October 1975)
On Stage ON BEING AN ELITIST CRITIC BY JOHN SIMON LET ME confess, as I take over the theater column, that I am an "elitist" critic—an epithet that has been hurled at me only a trifle less...
Paid articleThe Silent Minority (September 1954)
THE SILENT MINORITY BY JOHN SIMON Perhaps the greatest contribution America has made to intellectual history is its unparalleled enshrinement of anti-intellectualism as a way of life. And more...
Paid articleLying Down with the Barbarians (June 1975)
Culture Watching LYING DOWN WITH THE BARBARIANS BY JOHN SIMON It was William James, I think, who observed that there are two kinds of people; those who divide people into two kinds, and...
Paid articleOperating on the Opera (March 1975)
Culture Watching OPERATING ON THE OPERA by john simon trouble today, but none more so than opera. Money is tight, making patronage hard to come by, and opera is less popular and more expensive...
Paid articleToward Bigger and Better Boredom (February 1975)
CultureWatching TOWARD BIGGER AND BETTER BOREDOM By John Simon Mankind's greatest enemy is stupidity—an enemy so powerful that only an occasional battle against it can be won; the war, alas, is...
Paid articleHomosexuals in Life and the Arts (October 1974)
Culture Watching HOMOSEXUALS IN LIFE AND THE ARTS BY JOHN SIMON The American Psychiatric Association recently voted that homosexuality is not a sickness Soon thereafter, a good many psychiatrists...
Paid articleOn Being a Film Critic (August 1974)
Culture Watching ON BEING A FILM CRITIC BY JOHN SIMON This is no country for critics. The young, in one another's arms, listen to rock; commend whatever is on disk, on tape, on the air. Caught in...
Paid articlePop Goes the Word (June 1974)
Culture Watching POP GOES THE WORD BY JOHN SIMON Why does a culture decay? For many reasons, not the least of which is an excess of democracy. When the taste of the masses-the popular, or...
Paid articleWords and the Woman (April 1974)
CultureWatching WORDS AND THE WOMAN BY JOHN SIMON How dare men call it "hysterectomy" when they can't even have it, wonders my friend Steele Commager; it should be changed to "hersterec-tomy."...
Paid articleHow Many Ostriches Can Dance on a Pinhead? (February 1974)
Culture Watching HOW MANY OSTRICHES CAN DANCE ON A PINHEAD? BY JOHN SIMON Robert Wilson's The Life and Times of Joseph Stalin takes 12 hours to perform, from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. It ran for four...
Paid articleClinging to A. Burr (December 1973)
Clinging to A. Burr Burr: A Novel By Gore Vidal Random House. 428 pp. $8.95. Reviewed by-John Simon IN AN ESSAY called "Literary Gangsters" Gore Vidal wrote about me, among other good things:...
Paid articleMailer's Mystic Marriage (September 1973)
On Screen MAILER'S MYSTIC MARRIAGE BY JOHN SIMON l t is straight out of an Otto Preminger movie. A beautiful and famous woman, Marilyn, has died mysteriously. All that is left of her is a set...
Paid articleLove-Sacred and Profane (September 1973)
On Screen LOVE-SaCRED aND PROFaNE by john simon small films, inexpensively and independently made, have great appeal: One looks to them as a promising alternative to mass-produced mammoths from...
Paid articleYesterday's Gardenia's (August 1973)
On Screen YESTERDAYS GARDENIAS BY JOHN SIMON it^OOKING BACKWARD is One thing; looking backward while pretending you're looking straight ahead is quite another and worse matter. A Touch of...
Paid articlePlaying Up, Down and Side by Side (July 1973)
On Screen PLAYING UP, DOWN AND SIDE BYSIDE BY JOHN SIMON Cowinner with Scarecrow at the Cannes Festival, The Hireling is certainly the better film of the two, faint as that praise may be. Like...
Paid articleGames People Shouldn't Play (July 1973)
On Screen GAMES PEOPLE SHOULDN'T PLAY BY JOHN SIMON Let me say as little as possible about Sam Peckinpah's latest, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. It has obviously been cut and recut by Jim Aubrey...
Paid articleA Woman Who Left, A Man Who Stayed (June 1973)
On Screen A WOMAN WHO LEFT, A MAN WHO STAYED BY JOHN SIMON is not surprising that Ibsen's A Doll's House should enjoy such renewed popularity all of a sudden -with a current film version based on...
Paid articleFake Antique and Hardy Perennial (June 1973)
On Screen FAKE ANTIQUE AND HARDY PERENNIAL by john simon w W W ith Paper Moon, Peter Bogdanovich continues his progress into the past. Not a real past that he knew or creatively imagined, but...
Paid articleOn Screen (May 1973)
On Screen THE DIGNITY OF ORDINARY LIFE BY JOHN SIMON Y m asujiro Ozu. best known for Tokyo Story, is the most haunting filmmaker I know. With almost unnoticeable pinpricks, he insinuates himself...
Paid articleOn Screen (May 1973)
On Screen FOUR FEATHERS BY JOHN SIMON one of my favorite schoolboy boners runs: "Q.: Who said Kiss me Hardy!'? A.: Laurel." "Kiss me. Hardy!" were, of course, Lord Nelson's dying words to his...
Paid articleArt vs. Propaganda (April 1973)
On Screen ART VS. PROPAGANDA BY JOHN SIMON The big brouhaha of the month was George Stevens Jr.'s dropping of State of Siege from the gala opening roster at the American Film Institute's new...
Paid articleEscapism, Old and New (April 1973)
On Screen ESCAPISM, OLD AND NEW BY JOHN SIMON Well now, good people, what is your candidate for the worst picture of the last year or two? I limit the time range, for there is no point in...
Paid articleJunk Epics (April 1973)
On Screen JUNK EPICS BY JOHN SIMON poor Ludwig II of Bavaria! However mad, he was the sponsor of Richard Wagner and made the Ring and Bayreuth possible; this is to have done handsomely by the...
Paid articleA Flat Quintet (March 1973)
On Screen A FLAT QUINTET BY JOHN SIMON Let me address myself to some minor cinematic disappointments I had to bypass for the sake of some major ones. Biggest among these smaller letdowns is...
Paid articleVerse and Worse (March 1973)
On Screen VERSE AND WORSE BY JOHN SIMON Film has its own poetry, which does not accommodate itself to any other kind of poetry, except perhaps Shakespeare's, with any alacrity. That is why to...
Paid articleLast and also Least (February 1973)
On Screen LAST AND ALSO LEAST BY JOHN SIMON Last Tango in Paris is opening with maximal advance hoopla and with one of the cleverest advertising campaigns on record. When the film was first...
Paid articleKid Stuff (February 1973)
On Screen KID STUFF BY JOHN SIMON Barbra Streisand piece. The film this time is Up the Sandbox, based on a novel by Anne Richardson Roiphe, an occasional contributor to this magazine. I have...
Paid articleBergman Off-Traget (January 1973)
On Screen BERGMAN OFF TARGET BY JOHN SIMON Ingmar Bergman's Whispers and Criesor, as the distributor re-titled it, Cries and Whispers Attempts to do too much. We are given the interacting...
Paid articleAdapted or Misadapted? (January 1973)
On Screen ADAPTED OR MISADAPTED? BY JOHN SIMON Thanks to the Christmas season, we are deluged with holiday movie fare, most of it, appropriately, tinsel. But there is also that occasional...
Paid articleThe Art of Showing Nothing (December 1972)
On Screen THE ART OF SHOWING NOTHING BY JOHN SIMON Boredom becomes palpable in Robert Bresson's Four Nights of a Dreamer, a free adaptation of Dos-toevsky's much-filmed short story White Nights....
Paid articleUnlived Lives (December 1972)
On Screen UNLIVED LIVES BY JOHN SIMON Frank Perrys Play It As It Lays is a very bad movie made from the poor but prodigally overpraised novel by Joan Didion. Miss Didion's book was lauded...
Paid articleTrivial Travelogues (November 1972)
On Screen TRIVIAL TRAVELOGUES BY JOHN SIMON With YinThe Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, Luis Bunuel's once considerable but steadily evanescing art dissolves into senile doodling. Since Belle...
Paid articleDizzying Distortions (November 1972)
On Screen DIZZYING DISTORTIONS BY JOHN SIMON Francois Truffaut's Two English Girls is a disappointment, even coming from a filmmaker who has already made ample use of the artist's right to...
Paid articleMadness. Public and Private (October 1972)
On Screen MADNESS, PUBLIC AND PRIVATE BY JOHN SIMON Although not so great as me borrow and the Pity, Marcel Ophuls' new documentary about the Ulster troubles, A Sense of Loss, is a very...
Paid articleOn Screen (October 1972)
On Screen CLOSE TO THE SOIL BY JOHN SIMON It is almost impossible for me to write about Jan Troell s beautiful film. The Emigrants, choked up as I am with lage at Warner Brothers for cutting one...
Paid articleUnruly Rulers (October 1972)
On Screen UNRULY RULERS BY JOHN SIMON F ^^^nough instances of "the madman is saner than the so-called normal man" motif can be adduced in contemporary art to elevate the theme to a modern topos....
Paid articlePinpricks in the Panaceas (September 1972)
On Screen PINPRICKS IN THE PANACEAS The Howard Smith-Sarah Kernochan documentary, Marjoe, concerns the last months of Marjoe Gortner's ministry. The son of revivalist preachers in California,...
Paid articleOn Screen (September 1972)
On Screen DRIFTING IN DREARINESS BY JOHN SIMON Had La Salamandre received the short critical shrift it deserves, it could have been dismissed as a not absolutely untalented little film with its...
Paid articleFailing to Deliver (August 1972)
On Screen FAILING TO DELIVER BY JOHN SIMON There are two myths that will probably keep cropping up as long as literature exists. One is the myth of lost childhood, of the personal, private Age of...
Paid articleA Likely Candidate (July 1972)
On Screen A LIKELY CANDIDATE BY JOHN SIMON Apolitical film out of Hollywood is a rare bird indeed (though all birds, alas, are getting to be that); a good political film is almost unheard of....
Paid articleOn Screen (June 1972)
On Screen THE PLAY WAS THE THING BY JOHN SIMON Chekhov's Uncle Vanya is a play so beautiful that it hurts. But, as in the old joke, it only hurts when we laugh. For we find ourselves closeted in...
Paid articleHistory in White and black (June 1972)
On Screen HISTORY IN WHITE AND BLACK BY JOHN SIMON We are confronted today with a pair of very needed documentaries, and confrontation is the word for Malcolm X and The Trial of the Catonsville...
Paid articleOn Screen (May 1972)
On Screen CATS OF A DIFFERING STRIPE BY JOHN SIMON There are essentially two kinds of humor: for and against. For the easier acceptance of things as they are, which I shall call pro-humor; and...
Paid articleIn Praise of the Well-Made Film (May 1972)
On Screen IN PRAISE OF THE WELL-MADE FILM BY JOHN SIMON Just as there exists a genie called "the well-made play," there ought to be one called "the well-made film" This would mean a movie not...
Paid articleViews of Good and Evil (May 1972)
On Screen VIEWS OF GOOD AND EVIL BY JOHN SIMON IT IS not often that I get to write about a great film, and I wish the typography or the color of the printer's ink—or at least my style?could...
Paid articleOn Screen (April 1972)
On Screen KANGAROOS, KILLERS AND KOOKS BY JOHN SIMON outback is a film that has a roughly equal amount of right and wrong things about it. This makes it hard to discuss without sounding like a...
Paid articleOn Screen (March 1972)
On Screen CLEVER ADEQUACY, SIMPLE GREATNESS BY JOHN SIMON Goodness, in a work of art, is almost always highly specialized, boring, or simply unconvincing. In how many films have you seen plain...
Paid articleOn Screen (March 1972)
On Screen MISSES THROUGH MISDIRECTION BY JOHN SIMON Some films fail from sheer good intentions, which is the case of Andre Cayatte's To Die of Love. It is a partly fictionalized retelling of...
Paid articleOn Screen (February 1972)
On Screen VIOLENCE WITH A DIFFERENCE BY JOHN SIMON once again the subject is violence Sam Peckinpah's Straw Dogs has aroused the anger of reviewers on both sides of the Atlantic, and there is no...
Paid articleOn Screen (February 1972)
On Screen VULGARITY WITH A VENGEANCE BY JOHN SIMON M—_ Just as l am ready to bet my bottom dollar that Ken Russell could not make a film worth a farthing, along comes The Boy Friend to prove me...
Paid articleOn Screen (January 1972)
On Screen UNLIKELY COUPLES by JOHN SIMON Can there be such a thing as demotic satire? Hardly. Satire is a basically aristocratic genre in which one enlightened person speaks to another over the...
Paid articleOn Screen (January 1972)
On Screen JUICELESS ORANGE, DEFOLIATED GARDEN BY JOHN SIMON Alas, poor Kubrick! He is the American director for whom we had the highest hopes; who, alone among the younger crowd, promised...
Paid articleOn Screen (December 1971)
On Screen THE SCREEN BESTRIDES THE STAGE BY JOHN SIMON Plays resist screen adaptation much more doggedly than novels The former require additions, and these have a way of being easily deadlier...
Paid articleOn Screen (December 1971)
On Screen LAUGHING VIOLENCE BY JOHN SIMON Dusan Makavejev, the Yugoslav filmmaker, is a curious blend of artist and prankster The earliest work of his I saw, Man Is Not a Bird, was a rather...
Paid articleOn Screen (November 1971)
On Screen LEGALIZED MURDER, LEGITIMIZED NCEST BY JOHN SIMON Sacco and Vanzetti is an imperfect film, but not an inartistic or insignificant one. It is chiefly the work of Giuliano Montaldo, who...
Paid articleOn Screen (November 1971)
On Screen BOGDANOVICH RAMPANT BY JOHN SIMON PETER BOGDANOVICH is America's answer to the Cahieis phenomenon of film critic turned filmmaker, yet behind every answer there is a question In this...
Paid articleOn Screen (October 1971)
On Screen BUNDLES FROM BRITAIN BY JOHN SIMON Sundav, Bloody Sunday has all the surface glitter a film or a candy wrappmg could amass The plot itself seems dazzlingly new a young career woman...
Paid articleOn Screen (October 1971)
On Screen AUTUMN LEAVINGS BY JOHN SIMON ONE OF THE several unlikely things that complicate a critic's life is the schedule of special screenings. Because some reviewers have very early deadlines,...
Paid articleOn Screen (September 1971)
On Screen 'HOA BINH' MEANS PEACE BY JOHN SIMON Hoa Binh is, believe it or not, the first story film about Vietnam to be seen here, other than John Wayne's insufferably jingoistic and totally...
Paid articleOn Screen (September 1971)
On Screen FROM MIDDLING TO MADDENING BY JOHN SIMON WALTER ALLEN quotes an unnamed critic's description of L. P. Hartley's work: "comic in manner but full of terror in its implications." Small...
Paid articleOn screen (August 1971)
On Screen FLAILINGS OF THE FLESH BY JOHN SIMON THERE ARE two kinds of dishonesty: the kind that does not even care to pass for honesty, and the kind that implies or loudly proclaims it is telling...
Paid articleA Muse Driven Mad (July 1971)
A Muse Driven Mad Ah, Sweet Dancer: W. B. Yeats and Margot Ruddock Edited by Roger McHugh Macmillan. 144 pp. $4.95. Reviewed by John Simon IN YEATS' Last Poems there are two lyrics, "Sweet...
Paid articleOn Screen (July 1971)
On Screen DEADLY CLOWNING BY JOHN SIMON THE OLD MASTERS continue to strike out. Federico Fellini's The Clowns was made for television, but even that cannot excuse it. It is meant to be part...
Paid articleOn Screen (July 1971)
On Screen DANGER FROM BELOW BY JOHN SIMON The Hellstrom Chronicle is a documentary of the lives of various insects—chiefly ants, bees, termites, wasps, moths, butterflies, mayflies, spiders and...
Paid articleOn Screen (June 1971)
On Screen CRIME TIME BY JOHN SIMON I HAVE NEVER been partial to the criminal genre in any medium, though the nature of evil is an essential subject for artistic investigation. But the typical...
Paid articleOn Screen (June 1971)
On Screen POSSIBILITIES AND LIMITATIONS BY JOHN SIMON HERE ARE TWO films that plainly demonstrate the possibilities and limitations of the medium. Take the limitations first, as displayed in...
Paid articleOn Screen (May 1971)
On Screen YOUTHFUL INDISCRETIONS BY JOHN SIMON NOTHING but youth movies this time round. Well, Woody Allen's Bananas is not exactly a youth movie—it is more of a retarded, or second-childhood...
Paid articleOn Screen (May 1971)
On Screen KINKY SPORTS BY JOHN SIMON Derby is an interesting and instructive documentary, an experience and an education to see, but not much fun to write about. It considers the bloodlustiest...
Paid articleOn Screen (May 1971)
On Screen FORMAN AGAINST MAN BY JOHN SIMON It is hard to write about Taking Off without losing control. I cannot think offhand of any other movie as gracelessly, smugly and stupidly antihuman, as...
Paid articleOn Screen (April 1971)
On Screen HOARSE OPERETTA BY JOHN SIMON Bernardo bertolucci must be one of the world's most overrated filmmakers, and in few professions does overrating race ahead as unchecked as in film. His...
Paid articleOn Screen (April 1971)
On Screen WOMEN OF TODAY, MEN OF TOMORROW BY JOHN SIMON Winner of the grand prize in Venice just before prizes were discontinued there, Wanda owes even that dubious glory to politics. The...
Paid articleOn Screen (March 1971)
On Screen KNEE-DEEP IN PROFUNDITIES BY JOHN SIMON Preconized by our most powerful auteurist publication, the New York Times, Eric Rohmer's Claire's Knee is enjoying an improbable popularity. Some...
Paid articleOn Screen (March 1971)
On Screen ARTISTS AS THEY ARENT BY JOHN SIMON Many is the unsavory film I've had inflicted on me. There have been underground obscenities and aboveground monstrosities galore, but none succeeded...
Paid articleOn Screen (February 1971)
On Screen ABOVE SUSPICION, BENEATH CONTEMPT BY JOHN SIMON Elio Petri is one of the strangest film directors around. This strangeness does not lie in his predilection for films about high society...
Paid articleOn Screen (January 1971)
On Screen FIVE LOUSY PIECES BY JOHN SIMON Some leftovers from last year deserve brief epitaphs. If there are two countries in this world that cannot make a successful feature film, they are India...
Paid articleOn Screen (January 1971)
On Screen TWO FOR THE ROAD AND ONE FOR THE MONEY BY JOHN SIMON It is hard to decide whether films like Groupies and Gimme Shelter should be deplored or guardedly applauded For these are...
Paid articleOn Screen (December 1970)
On Screen HAMMERING IT IN BY JOHN SIMON Little Big Man is the sort of movie that makes you wish you had read the novel It is very good in spots, heavy-handed and obvious m others, tries too hard...
Paid articleOn Screen (December 1970)
On Screen LEAN YEARS BY JOHN SIMON David Lean, whose Ryan's Daughtei I discussed last time, is altogether a strange case a man afflicted with gigantism, who wants to make bigger and bigger movies...
Paid articleOn Screen (November 1970)
GIANTS IN CELLULOID BY JOHN SIMON LET us look at some big films now. There is, to begin with, Cromwell, a film written and directed by Ken Hughes, and rather defying assessment. One learns that...
Paid articleOn Screen (November 1970)
On Screen A MIXED-UP BAG BY JOHN SIMON Five Easy Pieces, also shown at the late lamentable New York Film Festival, is an attempt at making an American film adult and artistic as well as...
Paid articleOn Screen (November 1970)
On Screen WILD CHILDREN, TROUBLED ADULTS BY JOHN SIMON To continue with the jewel of the Eighth New York Film Festival, Carlos Saura's The Garden of Delights. The scenes in which the greedy...
Paid articleOn Screen (October 1970)
On Screen FURTHER FESTIVAL MISERIES BY JOHN SIMON The Eighth New York Film Festival included an unusually large number of "Special Events," some from the French Cinematheque, some from the...
Paid articleOn Screen (October 1970)
On Screen PROPAGANDA AND PRETENSION BY JOHN SIMON The Eighth New York Film Festival brings to fruition the tendencies inherent in the undertaking from its inception. For this Eighth Festival is a...
Paid articleFrench Ups and Downs (September 1970)
On Screen FRENCH UPS AND DOWNS BY JOHN SIMON Here are two attempts by the French cinema to shake off its current torpor. The first is Borsa-lino, a gangster film by Jacques Deray. Deray is known...
Paid articleOn Screen (September 1970)
On Screen MARRIAGE AND WORSE COALITIONS BY JOHN SIMON Diary of a Mad Housewife is the updated version of the "woman's picture," in which the trials and tribulations of a misunderstood wife who...
Paid articleTaste and Tastelessness (August 1970)
On Screen TASTE AND TASTELESSNESS BY JOHN SIMON w ? ^ hy does The Virgin and the Gypsy work for me as a film, whereas Women in Love did not? The main reason, I suppose, is that Virgin is a...
Paid articleOn Screen (July 1970)
On Screen MEYER'S BLUE HEAVEN BY JOHN SIMON c ^^^^ontinuing our survey of recent film pornography, we come to the most peculiar movie of all, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, a film Russ Meyer,...
Paid articleOn Screen (July 1970)
On Screen DIRTY MOVIES BY JOHN SIMON w ^ hat is pornography? Or what is pornocinematography? The question is frequently asked and even more frequently, and bor-ingly, answered. Yet it is a...
Paid articleOn Screen (June 1970)
On Screen TWILIGHT OF THE GODS BY JOHN SIMON The new Beatles film, Let It Be, is only for worshipful teenybop-pers and middle-aging intellectuals hell-bent on being with-it. Sloppily photographed...
Paid articleOn Screen (June 1970)
On Screen BERGMAN'S MASTER PASSION BY JOHN SIMON Ingmar Bergman's A Passion (released here as The Passion of Anna) records the interplay of four people on the small Swedish island where Bergman...
Paid articleOn Screen (May 1970)
On Screen youth films: onward and downward BY JOHN SIMON Most of the new movies are "youth films," with which there is nothing intrinsically wrong. At the crossroads between art and the market,...
Paid articleOn Screen (May 1970)
On Screen JEAN-LUC RAVES AGAIN BY JOHN SIMON Woodstock, the film by Michael Wadleigh, might seem to be the opposite of Pattern; but, as I suggested last time, it really isn't. The epic of peace...
Paid articleOn Screen (April 1970)
On Screen MATCHED OPPOSITES BY JOHN SIMON Francois Truffaut's The Mississippi Mermaid (La Sirene du Mississippi) was greeted both here and abroad with almost unanimous displeasure On the whole, I...
Paid articleOn Screen (April 1970)
On Screen LAWRENCE IN PRINT AND ON FILM BY JOHN SIMON D Lawrence used to remind me of a collier who, refusing to leave the hated mine by the elevator, insists on burrowing his way singlehanded...
Paid articleOn Screen (March 1970)
On Screen MORE PAINTERLY THAN FILMIC BY JOHN SIMON M_ _ ioni s Zabnskie Point is a thorough oversimplification of the American problem, a series of tendentious posters—sometimes very beautiful...
Paid articleOn Screen (March 1970)
On Screen FROM THE MILKY WAY TO THE BIG A BY JOHN SIMON As I mentioned last time, most reviewers saw in The Milky Way the "massive assault on the Roman Catholic Church" that Brad Darrach of Life...
Paid articleOn Screen (February 1970)
On Screen KICKING RELIGION AROUND BY JOHN SIMON ell Them Willie Boy Is Here is not a film we would ordinarily have to consider. It is a western that is in some ways a little above average, and...
Paid articleOn Screen (January 1970)
On Screen DAMNATIONS WITH A DIFFERENCE BY JOHN SIMON Not the least remarkable thing about They Shoot Horses, Don't They? is the photography by Philip A. Lathrop. There were considerable problems...
Paid articleMurder by Politics, Death by Dancing (January 1970)
On Screen MURDER BY POLITICS DEATH BY DANCING BY JOHN SIMON The French film, Z, and the American They Shoot Horses, Don't They? have a good deal in common. Both are based on fairly respectable...
Paid articleModest Delights (December 1969)
On Screen MODEST DELIGHTS BY JOHN SIMON T JL he one decidedly poor thing about La Femme Infidele is Jean Rabier's photography. The colors (and I doubt that it is merely a matter of the...
Paid articleAborted Poetry (December 1969)
Aborted Poetry ALONE WITH AMERICA By Richard Howard Atheneum. 594 pp. $12.50. Reviewed by JOHN SIMON It is customary in wax museums to sneak in among the famous effigies some waxen spectator...
Paid articleINFIDELITY AND NOSTALGIA (November 1969)
On Screen INFIDELITY AND NOSTALGIA BY JOHN SIMON Two big musicals based on old materials but refurbished to suit our ostensibly more sophisticated times bid for our attention. First there is...
Paid articleIN DUBIOUS BATTLE (November 1969)
On Screen INDUBIOUS BATTUE BY JOHN SIMON Three of the Seventh Festival's films fell into the "worth seeing" category. The first of these was Jaromil Jires' The Joke, about which I will write when...
Paid articleBooks, Movies and a Film (September 1969)
ON SCREEN By John Simon Books, Movies and a Film Let us clear the decks of miscellaneous overdue items. Two books from Prentice-Hall belong on all shelves truly dedicated to film. One is The...
Paid articleThe Great Twilight Way (September 1969)
The Great Twilight Way THE SEASON: A CANDID LOOK AT BROADWAY By William Goldman Harcourt, Brace & World. 432 pp. $6.95. Reviewed by JOHN SIMON William Goldman's book was a very good...
Paid articleArtificial Paradises (September 1969)
ON SCREEN By John Simon Artificial Paradises And now we have Justine on film. Actually it is not so much Justine as The Alexandria Quartet without Alexandria and without any quartet. How far can...
Paid articleViolent Idyls (August 1969)
ON SCREEN By John Simon Violent Idyls Seemingly the most debated film of the summer season is The Wild Bunch. One need only glance at any two reviews to get some idea of the critical divergence....
Paid articleMetaphoric Sex, Symbolic Circus (May 1969)
ON SCREEN By John Simon Metaphoric Sex, Symbolic Circus If Pier Paolo Pasolini's Teo-rema is not the worst film ever made, you can't blame it for not trying. A mysterious, handsome Stranger...
Paid articleA Variety of Hells (April 1969)
ON SCREEN The Maysles Brothers' new documentary, Salesman, follows four Catholic Bible salesmen as they push the Good Book from door to door, attend sales conferences, get pep talks and threats...
Paid articleProgress and Regression (March 1969)
ON SCREEN By John Simon Progress and Regression After one has testified for it in court and seen the testimony excerpted and misprinted in a book; after one has spent an evening in Stockholm...
Paid articleYouth Kick (March 1969)
ON SCREEN By John Simon Youth Kick A film of considerable distinction though missed excellence is // ... by Lindsay Anderson. Anderson's only other feature film was This Sporting Life, which...
Paid articleOn Screen (February 1969)
ON SCREEN By John Simon From Boredom to Art - or Not Chekhov was the musician of boredom. No one, not even Beckett, has drawn such recondite harmonies and such subtle discords from the motions,...
Paid articleOn Screen (January 1969)
ON SCREEN By John Simon Nightmare with Three Dreams Ingmar Bergman's Shame is a war film almost not about war. It is about the condition humaine, for which war serves as metaphor. Eva and Jan...
Paid articleAdaptations Ad Infinitum (December 1968)
ON SCREEN By John Simon Adaptations Ad Infinitum Oliver! is a nice, big movie musical about which it is hard to say anything of special interest to the reader or even to oneself. Lionel Bart had...
Paid articleOn Screen (December 1968)
ON SCREEN By John Simon Three Poisons Two Antidotes The one purveyor of pretentious tripe who can almost hold his own against Godard is Claude Chabrol, who gave Godard his first real break....
Paid articleOn Screen (November 1968)
ON SCREEN By John Simon For Connoisseurs of Chaos About Godard's Weekend I can say nothing that I haven't said of previous Godardiana. Just because Godard repeats his pretentious inanities, I see...
Paid articleOn Screen (September 1968)
ON SCREEN By John Simon Coming of Age One of the prerequisites for a well-made film is texture: a certain density in the relations among the characters, a certain solidity of the setting, a...
Paid articleOn Screen (August 1968)
ON SCREEN By John Simon Transition or Entropy? Strange things are happening to form in films. Thrillers don't thrill any more, romance does not seem very romantic, tear-jerkers don't jerk a...
Paid articleOn Screen (July 1968)
ON SCREEN By John Simon Unanswerable Films, Answerable Letters There are times when the film critic's lot, never to be envied much, is not to be envied at all. Having already reviewed the superb...
Paid articleOn Screen (June 1968)
ON SCREEN By John Simon Homeric and Sapphic Bulk has never particularly appealed to me. I do not mean merely the elephantine variety, which, except on elephants, I thoroughly deplore. Even...
Paid articleOn Screen (May 1968)
ON SCREEN By John Simon Space, Spice and Speciousness Godard's La Chinoise is uttered, even more than usual, with intertitles that sometimes come on letter by letter but not consecutively. When...
Paid articleOn Screen (April 1968)
ON SCREEN By John Simon Highly Specialized Madness Afilm by Ingmar Bergman that does not work is saddening in itself, and when the failure comes as a sequel to the magnificent Persona, it is that...
Paid articleOn Screen (March 1968)
ON SCREEN By John Simon Of Foxes and Doxies The characters in D. H. Lawrence's The Fox are, according to F. R. Leavis, "lower-middle-class and ordinary." In the film version, the class has been...
Paid articleOn Screen (March 1968)
ON SCREEN By John Simon Social Mobility Up and Down j^fcOETS ought to be stran-gled," wrote the disgruntled Lady Bulwer-Lytton from Italy, "for all the lies they have told of this country." Marco...
Paid articleOn Screen (February 1968)
NEW #1 AMERICAN REVIEW I ON SCREEN By John Simon Nulla Cum Laude One would like to be able to say that with The Graduate Hollywood has finally graduated; if so, the film merely demonstrates the...
Paid articleOn Screen (January 1968)
ON SCREEN By John Simon Cool, Cold, and Very Hot Circumstances have prevented my writing about Cool Hand Luke until now, and by this time Luke's hand must be positively gelid. Yet a few words are...
Paid articleOn Screen (November 1967)
ON SCREEN By John Simon The Festival Concluded One of the better films in the Fifth Festival's tail was the Hungarian Father, by Istvan Szabo Szabo's previous movie. Age of Illusions, augured...
Paid articleOn Screen (October 1967)
ON SCREEN By John Simon Fifth Festival: Growing Pains or Painful Growth? This year my deadline obliges me not to wait till the end of the New York Film Festival but to write from the thick of it....
Paid articleOn Screen (September 1967)
ON SCREEN By John Simon Peter Watkins Piivilege is the kind of film one feverishly painfully wishes to be good Made by the worthy creator of The Way Game, it argues that there is an unholy...
Paid articleOn Screen (July 1967)
ON SCREEN By John Simon The Czechs Are Coming Kenneth Tynan has remarked that, for whatever reason, all exciting theatrical aggregations are Left-oriented. The reasons (as Tynan must know...
Paid articleOn Screen (June 1967)
ON SCREEN By John Simon Sicilian Horseflies from Corsica It is Harold Pinter's misfortune to be an unusually clever child. At a time when the whole English-language theater is in one of its...
Paid articleOn Screen (May 1967)
ONSCREEN By John Simon Bergman Redivivus After seeing Ingmar Bergman's Persona twice, I still cannot be sure that I understand it. What I am sure of, however, is that something difficult and...
Paid articleOn Screen (April 1967)
ON SCREEN By John Simon The Oscar Is Wild At last year's Oscar ceremony, Bob Hope remarked that the Oscar was filmdom's most coveted award because it was given by experts. It is, he said, like...
Paid articleOn Screen (April 1967)
ON SCREEN By John Simon With Divine Ambition Puffed The good news in the world of film is that Ingmar Bergman reasserts his mastery with his magnificent Persona and that Peter Watkins' The War...
Paid articleOn Screen (March 1967)
ON SCREEN By John Simon Filmed Frenzy The film of Marat/Sade begins inauspiciously with a misspelling of Peter Brook's name in the credits (unless they have corrected it since). But it turns out...
Paid articleON SCREEN (February 1967)
ON SCREEN By John Simon The Heroes Are Tired Can one make films about politics? Not about the rise and fall of a popular leader such as Zapata, which is another matter, nor about war or the...
Paid articleOn Screen (January 1967)
ON SCREEN By John Simon A Bit Overblown MICHELANGELO ANTONIONl's Blow-Up, to paraphrase my old boss Archibald MacLeish. means more than it is. A film, I feel, should be before it means, should...
Paid articleArt taint and Art Attained (December 1966)
ON SCREEN By John Simon Art Taint and Art Attained The National Student Film Awards for 1966 made a poor showing. It may be that the writing, painting, or composing of college students would have...
Paid articleNo Thanks (November 1966)
ON SCREEN By John Simon No Thanks Not much a moviegoer can give thanks for this Thanksgiving. Turkeys, to be sure, are plentiful, foremost among them Jules Dassin's 10:30 P.M. Summer. A script by...
Paid articleA Fair Fourth (October 1966)
ON SCREEN By John Simon A Fair Fourth New York's Fourth Film Festival represents a marked improvement over last year's pitiful gallimaufry. It may be that this is due to the infusion of new blood...
Paid articleNot 'alf Bleedin' Wonderful (October 1966)
ON SCREEN By John Simon Not 'alf Bleedin' Wonderful The best comedy and the best serious film seen in New York so far this year happen to be one and the same: they are called Alfie, and they...
Paid articleTechnique Triumphant (August 1966)
ON SCREEN By John Simon Technique Triumphant A MAN AND A WOMAN IS mostly a woman: Anouk Aimée. There is not anywhere on today's screens a more intense yet mellow, a more striking but at the...
Paid articleWoolf Dog (July 1966)
ON SCREEN By John Simon Woolf Dog According to an announcement from Warner Brothers, their forthcoming thriller, Chamber of Horrors, will feature "two important motion-picture health-safety...
Paid articleGrowing Young Gracelessly (June 1966)
ON SCREEN By John Simon Growing Young Gracelessly That turn-of-the-century comic genius, Alphonse Allais, wrote a short sketch called "Des Gens simples," in which a husband, wife, and lover...
Paid articleYoung and Coolish (May 1966)
ON SCREEN By John Simon Young and Coolish MODERN MOVIE SCREENS no longer have the black border the screens of yesteryear were equipped with, but for the film fare of the past season, as I...
Paid articleGorilla Tactics (April 1966)
ON SCREEN By John Simon Gorilla Tactics Morgan! would appear to be the first underground movie made above ground. It is based on a BBC television play by David Mercer, stars two acclaimed...
Paid articleLoving Exploration (March 1966)
ON SCREEN By John Simon Loving Exploration There is cause for genuine, albeit temperate, rejoicing over the new Swedish film, Dear John. Here is a film that does not remind us of Strindberg...
Paid articlePearl Throwing Free Style (February 1966)
ON SCREEN By John Simon Pearl Throwing Free Style Not long ago, Sir Tyrone Guthrie deplored Sir Laurence Olivier's wasting his energies on the British National Theatre, work that "could be...
Paid articleKeeping the Doctor Away (January 1966)
ON SCREEN By John Simon Keeping the Doctor Away David Lean's Doctor Zhivago does for snow what his Lawrence of Arabia did for sand. From blue, through white, to silver -baleful in storms,...
Paid articleTowards a Definition of Pop Culture (January 1966)
ON SCREEN By John Simon Towards a Definition of Pop Culture In Thunderball, the latest of the James Bond films. Bond rescues two atom bombs from the hands of murderous bomb-nappers;...
Paid articleWherefore Art Thou, Juliet? (June 1965)
ON SCREEN By John Simon Wherefore Art Thou, Juliet? If it were just for a handful of silver, just for a riband to stick in his coat, we could forgive Fellini that he left us. Where money is the...
Paid articleQuintet in Three Flats (November 1965)
ON SCREEN By John Simon Quintet in Three Flats ONE OF THE greatest problems of art—perhaps the greatest —is that truth is not beauty, beauty not truth. Nor is that all we need t o know. The artist...
Paid articleGravity Defied (September 1965)
ON SCREEN By John Simon Gravity Defied An evening with the royal ballet makes ballet on film look even worse than usual. For one of its four offerings, it picked Ashton's insipid La Valse...
Paid articleSevere Glaucoma (August 1965)
ON SCREEN By John Simon Severe Glaucoma If you do not care how ill-gotten and obscene your laughs may be, there are two films to be seen currently that are guaranteed to have you rolling on the...
Paid articleThe New Men as Non-Men (June 1965)
ON SCREEN By John Simon The New Men as Non-Men FOR those who have not read the book, the film version of John Fowles' novel, The Collector, is a splendid thing. For those who have read it...
Paid articleWith a Capital A (May 1965)
ON SCREEN By John Simon With a Capital A Any attempt in America to make a film a work of art must be hailed. Usually, in the same breath, it must also be farewelled. Sidney Lumet's The Pawnbroker...
Paid articleSCREEN (April 1965)
ON SCREEN By John Simon Deserts of all Colors To go on with our discussion of Red Desert. Stanley Kauffmann managed to see in Antonioni's new film "the prospect of full human life in the midst of...
Paid articleChrist in Concrete (March 1965)
ON SCREEN By John Simon Christ in Concrete God is unlucky in The Greatest Story Ever Told. His onlybegotten Son turns out to be a bore. This is not the fault of Max von Sydow, whose Christ is...
Paid articleFake Death, Fake Love (February 1965)
ON SCREEN By John Simon Fake Death, Fake Love Normal love is the title of a film by Jack Smith, who made Flaming Creatures, and judging from a sizable excerpt I saw, it has nothing to do with...
Paid articleSee Naples and Live (January 1965)
ON SCREEN By John Simon See Naples and Live MARRIAGE ITALIAN STYLE-let us forget the title immediately. It must have sprung full-grown from the Herculean brain of Joe Levine, the producer who...
Paid articleOn Screen (December 1964)
ON SCREEN By John Simon A Demy Paradise AT the meeting of film-maker Jacques Demy and musician Michel Legrand, the best we might have hoped for is Claudelian silence: "Comme un pauvre...
Paid articleOn Screen (November 1964)
ON SCREEN By John Simon Escapism into Art Is Jean-Luc Godard's A Woman Is a Woman—as bad a film as anyone is ever likely to see—merely a product of crass stupidity, or is there something...
Paid articleOn Screen (October 1964)
ON SCREEN By John Simon The New Byzantinism Chabrol, one could see almost immediately, had no talent at all. In Le beau Serge he was able, at least, to create an atmosphere of pervasive...
Paid articleRidiculous and Sublime (July 1964)
ON SCREEN By John Simon Ridiculous and Sublime Satire may well be the most arduous artistic genre. Even before the satirist can get to the difficulties inherent in his art, he faces three...
Paid articleOf "Paradise' and Parasites (June 1964)
ON SCREEN By John Simon Of 'Paradise' and Parasites What are the movies coming to? Any day now they will become so bad that we shall all have to go to the theatre. And then where will we...
Paid articleHow Many Children Had Dr. Leavis? (May 1964)
How Many Children Had Dr. Leavis? SCRUTINY Edited by F. R. Leavis, el. al. Cambridge (20 vols.) 7,656 pp. $125. Reviewed by JOHN SIMON Author, "Acid Test" Arnold Bennett once remarked...
Paid articleIn the Cruellest Month (April 1964)
ON SCREEN By John Simon In the Cruellest Month You should see The Fall of the Roman Empire if: 1.) You can take a musician friend who owes you money. After 10 minutes of Dimitri Tiomkin's...
Paid articleSurface Sparkle and Inner Fire (March 1964)
ON SCREEN By John Simon Surface Sparkle and Inner Fire Seven Days in May is a useful movie, serving an entirely salutary purpose. It sets a standard for films that will not, or cannot, be...
Paid articleThe Struggle for Hope (February 1964)
ON SCREEN By John Simon The Struggle for Hope The altogether admirable thing about Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove is that it is the first American film to be thoroughly irreverent...
Paid articleOn Screen (January 1964)
ON SCREEN By John Simon Infantilism Revisited Possibly the one memorable sentence in Life's recent double issue on the movies read, "When Doris Day puckers up, Senegalese and Swedes feel...
Paid articleOn Screen (November 1963)
ON SCREEN By John Simon Fiction to Film: Is This Trip Necessary? Some time ago, apropos of theater, 1 enunciated a theorem: "There is a simple law governing the dramatization of...
Paid articleOn Screen (October 1963)
ON SCREEN By John Simon Keeping Up With Jones The poet Andrew Young, in a bucolic lyric, speaks of losing a contest with the river Stour: "I knew I lost the race—/ I could not keep so slow a...
Paid article31 Hath September (September 1963)
ON SCREEN By John Simon 31 Hath September As we entered Philharmonic Hall for the opening of the first New York Film Festival, a floating uneasiness hovered over our heads, exuded perhaps by...
Paid articleThe Last Asp (September 1963)
ON SCREEN The Last Asp By John Simon Anon-daily reviewer inevitably finds it necessary to bypass discussion of certain films for the sake of others, but the film scene, no less inevitably,...
Paid articleFellini's 8?? Fancy (August 1963)
ON SCREEN By John Simon Fellini's 8½¢ Fancy Things started going wrong with the Steiner episode in La Dolce Vita. Fellini was trying to show the problem of the modern intellectual, yet...
Paid articleGodlessness and Godawfulness (May 1963)
ON SCREEN By John Simon Godlessness and Godawfulness Like the great artist he is, Ingmar Bergman is striving for that limitation, that circumscription, in which the master, as Goethe says,...
Paid articleOn Screen (April 1963)
ON SCREEN By John Simon Scrambled Eggs For this Easter season, the cinema has been laying eggs plentifully. Grimly as 1 pursued my non-egg hunt. I could find no films free from the curse of...
Paid articleTrial and Error (April 1963)
ON SCREEN By John Simon Trial and Error The Sad thing about Orson Welles is that he has consistently put his very real talent to the task of glorifying his imaginary genius. Now one of the...
Paid articleOn Screen (March 1963)
ON SCREEN By John Simon Love at Twenty Despair at Forty Love at Twenty is like a dusty, bumpy, twisting country road: not easy to drive along, leading nowhere in particular, but...
Paid articleON SCREEN (February 1963)
ON SCREEN By John Simon Fashions in Failure If I were asked to name some of the things the film has not been able to do, and perhaps cannot do, the successful conveying of utter boredom, of...
Paid articleOn Screen (January 1963)
ON SCREEN Across the Sands And into the Psyche By John Simon The Riddle of Lawrence (if riddle there be) is certainly not solved in Lawrence of Arabia. But what is made abundantly clear is...
Paid articleImages: Imaginative and otherwise (December 1962)
ON SCREEN Images: Imaginative and Otherwise By John Simon The New Wave is wavering. Having, with a few notable exceptions, waived sense for the sake of scintillation, and pushed this to the...
Paid article"Me, Too!" in Arcadia (November 1962)
ON SCREEN "Me, Too!" in Arcadia By John Simon Jules Dassin's Phaedra is a curious love story, indeed. There is the love of a man for a man, made even more fetching by the fact that they are...
Paid articleTorture Chamber Music (October 1962)
ON STAGE Torture Chamber Music By John Simon Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? ferociously holds one's interest during its long running time, and insidiously occupies one's imagination for...
Paid articleMovies for the Masses: (January 1961)
Movies for the Masses Kino. By Jay Leyda. Macmillan. 493 pp. $9.50. Reviewed by John Simon Associate editor, Mid-Century Book Society; Drama critic, "Hudson Review" Kino by Jay Leyda is not...
AuthorSimon, Kate
AuthorSimonson, Rebecca C.
AuthorSIMPSON, JAMES
AuthorSimsar, Mehmed A.
AuthorSinclair, Uplon
AuthorSINCLAIR, UPPON
AuthorSINCLAIR, UPTON
AuthorSINGER, DAVID
AuthorSINGER, ISAAC BASHEVIS
AuthorSINGER, SAUL
AuthorSington, Derrick
AuthorSIRGIOVANNI, GEORGE
AuthorSISMAN, ELAINE
AuthorSISON, PASTOR B.
AuthorSKALSKI, ERNEST
AuthorSKLAR, JUDITH
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