What defines film criticism is to talk about films and ponder over the nature of cinema. The existence of criticism implies the artistic characteristics of cinema : dissociation of the artistic value from the movie budget, ambitions and commercial success. The critic is meant to ignore the public reception and speculate on the film's meaning in art history (its value in duration and immanence).
4 main criteria :- Love of Cinema : passion + curiosity (for discoveries and novelties). Watching a lot of movies.
- Culture : expert of cinema history (1000 or 2000 essential films to know to be able to relativize the creativity/skill of new movies against past production) + deep general culture (arts and real world, which is the source of cinema inspiration)
- Cinema technique knowledge
- Writing Quality : style, communicative enthousiasm, readable, clarity, pedagogy.
- 5) Sensibility : emotion. To develop affectivity even for disliked movies.
- 6) Stance without prejudice : Judgement rooted in critical theory trends without rigid ideology.
- 7) Objectivity : no influence by the majority of opinions, nor by personal mood/instinct.
- 8) Sense of hierarchy (values) : Being able to make pertinent comparisons. Freedom and independance of thinking, against the editorial line, other critics and social fads)
-- The development of video with easy access to repeat viewing should help critics to develop a deeper analysis, but it only serves to scholars. Weekly reviewers write a critique after one viewing (or 2 at best).
-- National traditions : study of acting performance is almost never considered in France, while gesture analysis, eyes, voice intonations are largely developped in the USA.
-- Mentality imposed by the timeframe :
- Political interpretation was the exclusive entry point during the cold war and witch hunt.
- Then spiritualist and moral analysis, or taste, offer multiple readings (mise-en-scene, topic, genre, ambition) because everyone realized cinema cannot change the world. Informational criticism seeks the key-significance, raison d'être of the film, its humane value. (R. Guyonnet, Le métier de critique, Esprit, #6, juin 1960)
- Feyredoun Hoveyda suggests the aesthetic value of film is the only viewpoint possible, opposed to the key-significance. "I like extreme opinions. Since each can only defend his/her own truth, it's vain to stay in the middle ground, because a film is only the combination of a limited number of elements skillfuly organized. Thus what is the point to balance good v. bad scenes, or form v. content? This comes down to decomposing the artwork and doesn't grasp its globality because the whole is different from the sum of its parts. The thought of a filmmaker is revealed through its mise-en-scene (Politique des Auteurs)" (Les tâches du soleil, Cahiers du Cinéma, #110, aug. 1960)
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4 commentaires:
This is just brilliant, isn't it?
I've been focusing on film criticism for about a year now. In the beginning I had high hopes for journalistic film criticism. Because there are so many critics writing, I thought, surely there must be a wonderful, pluralistic "conversation" going on. And initially, I found evidence for this conversation: in Slate's movie club, in the informal debate between Matt Zoller Seitz and Dave Kehr earlier this year, in print exchanges between Roger Ebert and Scott Foundas.
But these are the exceptions, not the rule. There are still enough of these exceptions to make a study of journalistic film criticism's history interesting and worthwhile. But Harry, I'm beginning to share to a very large extent your frustration with the critical establishment.
There is a conversation, and it is pluralistic--but it seems that most critics use each new movie as an opportunity to say, basically, the same thing. Whatever their thing is. And those are the good critics.
I love this:
-- The development of video with easy access to repeat viewing should help critics to develop a deeper analysis, but it only serves to scholars. Weekly reviewers write a critique after one viewing (or 2 at best).
Sorry to be scarce around these parts lately! My local film festival wraps on Thursday, and I'm looking forward to getting back in the swing of reading and writing on a daily basis!
Thanks Andy, you're one of the very few bloggers I know who cares for criticism theory. Jim Emerson also goes out of his way to review his peers and engage with critical debates (around reviewing posture), and as the editor at Ebert's website, he could focus on his own reviews like everyone else, but he's opened on the online critics scene.
I'm surprised there aren't more bloggers who care to engage theoreticaly with established (print) critics...
Well, I beguin to understand the real divide isn't print/online, but between ideal-driven criticism and empiristic-driven criticism.
Some critics look up to greater theories (and talk about cinema), some critics are afraid of this snobbery and prefer to ignore the big picture and adapt reviewing techniques to their gut feelings of the moment, one movie at the time. We can't really argue.
Will there be a MovieClub at Slate this year???
Good luck with your GC dispatches. You're doing great! I like them.
Well, I beguin to understand the real divide isn't print/online, but between ideal-driven criticism and empiristic-driven criticism.
Oh yeah. I am really starting to come around to this realization myself...
I hope that there will be a Movie Club this year. There's no reason why they shouldn't now that they have a lead critic...
And thanks for the kind words about my GC dispatches! The only way one learns how to do something like that is by trying. It's been an instructive experience for sure...
I wonder if the Movie Club will take place without the lead of Edelstein. It's not like if every editor around fights to have their own Movie Club... Edelstein made it happen because he believed in it. Well, let's hope.
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