Film Criticism

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whaleallright
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Re: Film Criticism

#1026 Post by whaleallright » Mon Jan 28, 2019 8:48 pm

The internet and social media in particular have not been healthy for Rosenbaum and other critics inclined to pugnacity. I grew up reading his reviews in the Reader which were often smartly written and salted with interesting, original observations, even if he always had some strange bugaboos that I think we've discussed elsewhere on this site. I learned a lot from his writing. For better or worse, he's no Armond White, whose entire ouevre (at least from the last 20 years) can be described as a form of contrarianism.

There was once a generosity in Rosenbaum's work that wasn't always tinged with envy and bitterness. It's still faintly evident, as is his vast knowledge, in his rambling "Global Discoveries" column in Cinemascope. But like the bizarrely assorted tidbits in those columns, the internet has exacerbated the least appealing qualities of Rosenbaum's writing: the tendentiousness, the flippancy, the replacement of observation and description with summary judgment, the weird sideswipes at other critics that are at once nasty and not substantive enough to merit proper response. Or maybe he's just getting old. Whatever the causes, it saddens me.
[EDIT] This said, I have to agree that Kubrick is leagues above Nolan (at this point of his career).
Comments of this nature suggest that you, like Rosenbaum, have entirely missed the point of Bordwell's original observation and his subsequent explanations of same. :sigh:

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Red Screamer
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Re: Film Criticism

#1027 Post by Red Screamer » Tue Jan 29, 2019 3:13 am

Rosenbaum is one of my favorite critics, but that whole spat with Bordwell was not a good look for him. I think JR sees himself in the Cahiers Young Turks strain of fanatic criticism, in his own pragmatic and less poetic way (there's a reason Godard called him one the greatest contemporary critics in the 70s, when Rosenbaum was even more combative).

Bordwell's graceful response in this blog post is spot on and makes me consider how often I'm guilty of this kind of snappy partisanship. He's right about how fruitful an approach of curiosity over evaluation can be for a film viewer. For example, I recently saw Lights of New York, which is called the first "all-talking" picture, a film I would consider pretty awful by any standard, but it provided a really interesting jumping off point for thinking about early sound practices and the many roads Hollywood sound cinema could have gone down. Though I suspect I have a lower tolerance for boring filmmaking than Bordwell does, considering projects like Reinventing Hollywood, where, from what I understand, he watched basically every Hollywood film released in the 40s!

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BenoitRouilly
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Re: Film Criticism

#1028 Post by BenoitRouilly » Tue Jan 29, 2019 7:52 am

whaleallright wrote:
Mon Jan 28, 2019 8:48 pm
Comments of this nature suggest that you, like Rosenbaum, have entirely missed the point of Bordwell's original observation and his subsequent explanations of same. :sigh:
True that. However, unlike Rosenbaum, I don't consider it a show-stopper for me, nor would I insult him for such a remark.
Bordwell does make a comparison between two filmmakers, and I automatically make a comparative evaluation of each œuvre in my mind to assess the intention. To me Kubrick is in the all-time top10. And maybe Nolan is also according to Bordwell's standards (or he didn't mean to evaluate his importance to film history) but he's not to me. Nolan does make excellent "cerebral blockbusters" but not flawless landmarks like Kubrick did (not all of Kubrick's films are flawless tho).

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tenia
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Re: Film Criticism

#1029 Post by tenia » Tue Jan 29, 2019 8:00 am

Fascinating read. I like both as reviewers and are part of my Go To reviewers but what he describes here is just the art of argumenting in the context of movie reviews.
I dont mind strongly minded reviewers but I mind fallacies being paraded as true arguments. They're not. And they're even easier to point out when it's not directly related to the movie, like the Bergman obit or here JR's remark, because you can't even argue it's just personal tastes you can't explain.

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whaleallright
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Re: Film Criticism

#1030 Post by whaleallright » Tue Jan 29, 2019 6:17 pm

I feel like Rosenbaum's comments on Bergman were not so much "fallacies" (e.g. obviously disprovable claims or false logic) as just extremely tendentious and thinly-argued opinions masquerading as quasi-objective "expert" comment.

Bordwell isn't really a "reviewer" (which is sorta one of his major points in this whole kerfuffle) although sometimes his and Thompson's festival reports include what amount to little reviews. One thing that I enjoy about his blog is that he has extended commentaries on recent films I did not like—such as La La Land and Inception—that still teach me something about how those films fit into contemporary cinema and the history of the medium. In other words, in suspending obvious forms of judgement, or going past them, these entries make interesting observations that reviewers whose "brands" are more about defining their tastes wouldn't arrive at.

This is essentially a scholarly endeavor, even if his blog isn't always "scholarly" in the stricter sense (no footnotes, no peer review). Even the more intellectual film magazines like Sight & Sound tend to intermix judgement and historical observation/analysis such that it can be difficult to distinguish the two. I suspect that one reason that academic film studies receives shade from film critics and journalists—aside from scholars' recourse to abstruse jargon—is that such a relatively dispassionate approach seems anathema to the buzz they get from talking about movies with other folks in terms of bad/good, etc.
Last edited by whaleallright on Wed Jan 30, 2019 12:01 am, edited 1 time in total.

JakeStewart
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Re: Film Criticism

#1031 Post by JakeStewart » Wed Jan 30, 2019 2:51 am

I like Rosenbaum and share a lot of his tastes, but there are some inconsistencies in his criticism which I've always found hypocritical. When he doesn't like a particular film he will usually give a valid reason for disliking it, whether it be for moral reasons or something else. But he sometimes seems to pick and choose which films he objects to on these grounds. For example, he objects (rightly) to the male chauvinism found in The Godfather but doesn't seem to have much of an issue with the outright contempt that Godard shows for some of his female characters. Sure, he acknowledges this about Godard in his criticism, but he definitely doesn't let it affect him as far as enjoying his films. So why does he object to The Godfather and not, say, Pierrot le Fou?

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Mr Sausage
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Re: Film Criticism

#1032 Post by Mr Sausage » Wed Jan 30, 2019 1:52 pm

The academic trend of treating the humanities the way one would treat the sciences, or perhaps how one would approach philosophy, is pretty recent. Articulating what constituted successful art was a major form of academic criticism for a long time.

I think the key is something Bordwell mentioned in his post, namely that what distinguishes reviewing from other forms of criticism is the presence of the marketplace.

Fundamentally, a review is there to advise consumers on how to spend their money. It's not so different from the aims of a blu-ray review or even a car or electronics review. It's only this or that film critic's allegiance to the humanistic origins of their profession that might distinguish their reviews from reviews of other consumer products. A reviewer may find herself pulled between competing concerns: between evaluating a film's relationship to its medium, on the one end, and recommending its value to a potential audience of consumers on the other. Many reviewers bridge the two with the implicit assumption that a movie that's successful as a piece of art, say, ought to be successful with its potential audience as imagined by the reviewer. I don't see many reviewers recommending a movie that's terrible because it's terrible in exactly the ways audiences love. Mostly they end with a beleaguered sigh that audiences won't care about their reviews anyway and the whole exercise is sort of pointless.

Not that I want to put down reviewers. Reviewers have (or had, anyway) an interesting position arising out of the emergence of the concept of the public sphere: they are in the position of informing, cultivating, guiding, and finally elevating the taste of the society they function in. In the great age of the periodical, the 18th century, the age of Addison, Steele, Johnson, et al, that's precisely what they did, and they helped foster a wider appreciation of the balanced, the neo-classical, and the sublime in literature and art (and manners). The reviewer held a kind of moral position. Even in the early twentieth century, reviewers like Edmund Wilson were performing something like the same, gently or even fiercely guiding the public towards more informed and refined tastes and championing what they thought to be the most interesting and vital in the new literature.

As an ideal and artificial set of distinctions: reviewers are tastemakers poised within the public sphere. Critics are evaluators poised within a system of institutions. Scholars are producers of knowledge poised within a historical discipline.

In practise the above categories are messy and bleed into each other. But there's a value in keeping these distinctions in mind, to wit: the problem (aside from Rosembaum being an ass) is Rosenbaum attacked a more critical/scholarly claim for the outrageous offense of not also being a tastemaking one. He confused the ranking of artists in the public sphere for the job of the critic/scholar. Rosenbaum's been at his job as tastemaker so long he seems to've confused his purview for a wider moral necessity. Whether Nolan resembles Kubrick has very little to do with whether he's as good as Kubrick. Plenty of artists are equally good without otherwise resembling each other. It's only important to someone who thinks the crucial task is to cultivate taste, in which case publicly linking two artists of unequal stature is going to seem like some grand offense because the main point is always to tell the public exactly how artists are not of the same stature. It's easy to see how this sort of thing could come to seem a responsibility.

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movielocke
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Film Criticism

#1033 Post by movielocke » Wed Jan 30, 2019 2:05 pm

I’m relieved to get a little more empirical rigor in the humanities, I always found it appalling to have science classes detailing the horrors wreaked by Freudian techniques and the way it depended entirely on flattering and fulfilling the “analysts” predispositions and perceptions, blinding them to anything that wasn’t onanistically massaging their egos, and then go to a humanities class and being told, we are reading Freud the next two months, his analysis techniques are the best tools ever and we’ll be using them the rest of the semester.

Made for easy A papers, though.

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Mr Sausage
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Re: Film Criticism

#1034 Post by Mr Sausage » Wed Jan 30, 2019 2:17 pm

I don't know. I look at Freud the same way as the Bible: it might not be true, but it can be a useful context to interpret artists who grew up within it. Just as I've always kept in mind Northrop Frye's observation that the Ptolemaic universe isn't true, but seems to be much more appropriate for poetry. Sometimes what's untrue empirically is perfect for creating significance within a verbal or other structure.

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DarkImbecile
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Re: Film Criticism

#1035 Post by DarkImbecile » Wed Jan 30, 2019 2:33 pm

Sausage, on an even more thinly sliced distinction, would you agree with Bordwell's differentiation between A) reviewers/critics serving that function of guiding and elevating public tastes around a combination of objective and subjective evaluative criteria and B) those using a 'dogmatic criticism' to enforce adherence to more purely taste-based opinions? I'm curious because — while initially it seems like distinguishing between these two categories relies on a Potter Stewart-esque "I know it when I see it" rubric that I can't entirely defend — I am sympathetic to the idea that too many critics structure their writing about film around nuggets of received wisdom about what constitutes quality cinema and/or performatively contrarian stances for or against artists, styles, or works which everyone else has supposedly misunderstood.

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Mr Sausage
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Re: Film Criticism

#1036 Post by Mr Sausage » Wed Jan 30, 2019 4:01 pm

DarkImbecile wrote:
Wed Jan 30, 2019 2:33 pm
Sausage, on an even more thinly sliced distinction, would you agree with Bordwell's differentiation between A) reviewers/critics serving that function of guiding and elevating public tastes around a combination of objective and subjective evaluative criteria and B) those using a 'dogmatic criticism' to enforce adherence to more purely taste-based opinions? I'm curious because — while initially it seems like distinguishing between these two categories relies on a Potter Stewart-esque "I know it when I see it" rubric that I can't entirely defend — I am sympathetic to the idea that too many critics structure their writing about film around nuggets of received wisdom about what constitutes quality cinema and/or performatively contrarian stances for or against artists, styles, or works which everyone else has supposedly misunderstood.
For sure. I mean, this kind of dogmatism exists on all levels. It's the attempt to raise belief and opinion to the level of truth. There are plenty of dogmatic critics who've arrived at a narrow concept or methodology, mistaken it for a fundamental principle akin to universal truth, then gotten really aggressive about it. There are also plenty of critics who've arrived at the same thing, minus the aggression, but whom you can still tell view alternative methods and viewpoints as simply error. It's...infuriating. But some of those critics can still manage to be interesting and insightful. You just have to keep their limits in mind when you read.

I don't read a lot of film criticism, but isn't the signal instance of this Ray Carney? Cassavetes found him and has never let him go. Carney's entire critical practise is judging how much a film resembles Cassavetes. You wonder why he bothers to watch anything else. Rosenbaum is nowhere near this level, but judging from the comments above (I don't remember a single thing I've read by him, honestly, so it's all I can go on) it seems like he treats differences in taste and opinion as simply error, in the case of Bordwell egregious error. Armond White's another, but his dogmas are harder to pin down because he defines them so poorly. I mean, he trashes anything guilty of "hipster nihilism" but I'm hard pressed to say what hipster nihilism actually is. It's whatever he says it is, I guess. But when he hands that judgement down, that's the end of it. His judgements are set in stone; there is no recourse. As he always says, he speaks "truth to power", and anyone who believes that is too messianic for argument. They are promulgating truth, not making provisional statements.

Harold Bloom (who could no doubt come in for some criticism on this front) sometimes tells a story I like about his lunches with his friend, the now deceased deconstructionist Paul de Man. Quoted from here: "I believe [that there is no method except yourself] very passionately. My friend Paul de Man with whom, as I say, I used to argue endlessly, would tell me that after a lifetime of searching, he had found the method, the 'Troot,' as he put it—that Belgian pronunciation of 'Truth.' I would say, 'No, dear Paul, there is no Truth. There is only the Self.'" I admire that stance. When you're reading criticism, you're reading a personality as much as anything else.

I don't know if I answered your question. I started off wanting to do that and then ended up meandering around. Sorry.

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Noiretirc
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Re: Film Criticism

#1037 Post by Noiretirc » Wed Jan 30, 2019 5:02 pm

This thread should be titled Film Critic Criticism. Just sayin'.

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colinr0380
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Re: Film Criticism

#1038 Post by colinr0380 » Thu Jan 31, 2019 6:45 am

"Critical Analysis of Critic's Criticism (plus something about an actual film at some point)"!

I hesitate to add my two cents because I much admire the writing of both Rosenbaum and Bordwell and neither of them appear blameless in this situation. They both seemed to overreact a bit at the flippant comments made by the other that would better have stood on their own as somewhat damning final comments in themselves (since comparing Nolan to Kubrick, or someone to Trump, are pretty worn subjects of discourse anyway!)

As to turning things into an analytical versus critical schism, I think you need both. A dry analysis of shot placements and how timing a shot and editing patterns work, which Bordwell excels at, is a wonderful tool to dissect how a filmmaker is able to achieve an effect on an audience member. Rhythms, colour patterns, placements of actors (mise-en-scene), the use of conventional techniques and the power that comes from breaking those conventions in novel ways, are really useful approaches to take to both specific films as well as to overviews of a director's filmography (or the style of a production company, such as classic Hollywood studio filmmaking).

But it is also important to look at what these techniques and resources are being used to say in terms of both the narrative of the film (if there is a discernible one) or the underlying themes and subtexts that are being conveyed by the film. As well as how successful it is (perhaps even inadvertently!) in its aims. And that is where Rosenbaum's critical analysis comes in, which is where he excels. That is also something much more subjective that can be much more subject to emotion and the feelings of a viewer (which makes it a bit more 'dangerous' than technical analysis where the film can be broken down into component parts to see how it ticks), and I think what we were seeing with that initial Nolan-Kubrick comparison was the clash between someone making that comparison purely on a technical level and someone concerned that Nolan has not reached what they consider to be the 'philosophical insight' of Kubrick despite having some of the same superficial qualities.

The best films use technical aspects to achieve emotional effects. I love finding out how films are made to create those feelings technically, and find it fascinating that almost insignificant editing or timing differences (and actorial decisions, set dressing choices, costumes, scoring etc, etc) can make a film work perfectly or cause everything to seem just slightly off from achieving its goals. But I also want to know what a film means to people, how it affects them (positively or negatively! or not at all!) and whether the story it is telling was felt to have been of interest to them, or moved them in some way. After all that should be the goal of all art - entertain, inform, broaden our horizons by showing us the wider world in new ways - and the technique used to do it, while important, is the means by which to get there and impart that feeling to us.

(I should say that I love both Nolan and Kubrick. But Jonathan Glazer as much if not more!)

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whaleallright
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Re: Film Criticism

#1039 Post by whaleallright » Fri Feb 01, 2019 4:18 pm

But it is also important to look at what these techniques and resources are being used to say in terms of both the narrative of the film (if there is a discernible one) or the underlying themes and subtexts that are being conveyed by the film.
in what world do David Bordwell and many other film scholars not do this? half of his writing is about narrative, for one thing.

you are setting up a false opposition between some imagined arid formalism (which just describes individual shots) and a more robust "criticism." it's true that film critics writing for newspapers and magazines don't typically have the space or time to do close analyses of the kind featured in some of Bordwell's books and blog posts. (though of course the best critics have a knack for conveying formal traits of a film in a more pithy way.) but it's hardly the case that scholarship neglects "underlying themes and subtexts."

one thing I do regret is the increasing rarity of the writer on film who straddles the worlds of criticism and scholarship. I'd argue that Bordwell actually sort of fits in there, since so much of his recent writing is the semi-informal stuff on his blog. Ian Christie is another contemporary example. but they are Boomers—among only the 2nd generation of professional film scholars, in fact. I don't know that there are many younger examples. maybe Nick Davis.

in past decades, some of the very best writers on film were those who began writing for magazines and wound up teaching.... people like Charles Barr, V.F. Perkins (perhaps the best writer on film—or at least the classical cinema— in English, IMO), Raymond Durgnat, Gilberto Perez....* The sort of writing these men did would probably not help them to get tenure most places now, but it displays a mix of smart, unpretentious prose (which being working critics helped with) and the sort of sustained attention to detail central to the scholarly humanities.

*Robin Wood is part of the same generation, and deserves mention, but I think his move into a more "academic" (theoretical/dogmatic) form of writing killed much of what was refreshing and engaging in his criticism.
This thread should be titled Film Critic Criticism.
What else would a thread entitled "Film Criticism" be about?
Last edited by whaleallright on Sat Feb 02, 2019 5:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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colinr0380
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Re: Film Criticism

#1040 Post by colinr0380 » Fri Feb 01, 2019 5:01 pm

I agree whaleallright, I probably pushed Bordwell into seeming to just be technically focused too much in the previous comment, when he does much more than that in his writings.

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Re: Film Criticism

#1041 Post by Noiretirc » Fri Feb 01, 2019 8:32 pm

whaleallright wrote:
Fri Feb 01, 2019 4:18 pm

What else would a thread entitled "Film Criticism" be about?
Well, I would hope that it would be about criticism of the work of Film Critics, (which it mostly is, to be fair), rather than leaning heavily towards criticism of the personalities of Film Critics, (which happened a few pages back), if I can be critical.

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Re: Film Criticism

#1042 Post by furbicide » Sat Feb 02, 2019 5:56 am

Not really interested in the Bordwell/Rosenbaum spat (seemed a little precious to me on both sides, but then who cares about ego-driven private/public personal beefs?), but I am nonetheless saddened by some of the characterisations of Rosenbaum as being no more than a left-wing Armond White who likes good films. I think that vastly understates his contribution to discourse on film.

Rosenbaum has always been a compelling writer and one who actually engages with films and the political context surrounding them, but for me, his most important work has been his tireless championing of important films and filmmakers which have often been critically and commercially neglected. Who else was talking about Out 1 ten, twenty years ago? (etc.)

Also, I’m a huge fan of Bergman, but there was nothing wrong with that obit piece. He argued the case strongly and fairly, even if I profoundly disagreed with him – there’s no place for sacred cows in film criticism.

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Re: Film Criticism

#1043 Post by Cremildo » Sat Feb 02, 2019 10:17 am

furbicide wrote:
Sat Feb 02, 2019 5:56 am
but there was nothing wrong with that obit piece. He argued the case strongly and fairly
Fellow user BenoitRouilly's blog posts ripped it to shreds with ease, and linked to others who did the same, so I fail to see how Rosenbaum's opportunistic and tasteless op-ed obituary was strong or fair.

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hearthesilence
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Re: Film Criticism

#1044 Post by hearthesilence » Sat Feb 02, 2019 12:30 pm

furbicide wrote:
Sat Feb 02, 2019 5:56 am
Also, I’m a huge fan of Bergman, but there was nothing wrong with that obit piece. He argued the case strongly and fairly, even if I profoundly disagreed with him – there’s no place for sacred cows in film criticism.
If memory serves, the New York Times approached him about writing that. (I can't remember if Dave Kehr suggested him to the editorial board - Kehr was much more critical of Bergman when he wrote for the Chicago Reader, and at the time this article was published he was a regular DVD columnist for the New York Times.) When Rosenbaum submitted his final draft, the editor actually demanded rewrites because it was believed that editorials had to push hard with their argument which meant coming down harder on Bergman. (Anyone who's submitted a news story will be familiar with this, as well as the frustrations with everything that it entails, from potential distortions to oversimplifications just to make it more 'compelling.') Also, writers don't necessarily come up with their own headlines (that's mostly editorial's job), and the headline on this one was certainly inflammatory.

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domino harvey
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Re: Film Criticism

#1045 Post by domino harvey » Sat Feb 02, 2019 1:45 pm

He wrote it and he put his name on it, period

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Re: Film Criticism

#1046 Post by hearthesilence » Sat Feb 02, 2019 2:11 pm

If you want to view it that simply, you can do that.

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domino harvey
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Re: Film Criticism

#1047 Post by domino harvey » Sat Feb 02, 2019 2:25 pm

How much more complex is it? It's not like he apologized for his words or intent, he just blamed the paper's editors for encouraging him.

It's also telling that furbicide's defense of Rosenbaum against my characterization of him predictably concluded with "What other critic was praising the movie I like?" Like I suspect everyone else on this forum, there's plenty of movies and directors I enjoy as much as Rosenbaum does. So what? That isn't a defense against his behavior, demeanor, or output. Equating Bordwell and Rosenbaum's behavior in this spat as equally questionable is evidence either of someone not bothering to actually read what happened or showing a blind allegiance to their leader, much like Trump's unwavering 30% block of supporters (a completely unfair comparison made in honor of the man who paved the way for such rhetoric)

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hearthesilence
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Re: Film Criticism

#1048 Post by hearthesilence » Sat Feb 02, 2019 2:40 pm

He clarified his words and intent during the fallout. Is it really necessary for him to actually say "sorry" if editorial decided to take what he wrote in another direction?

The spat against Bordwell is asinine, so much that I really have no interest in discussing it, much less defending it.

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whaleallright
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Re: Film Criticism

#1049 Post by whaleallright » Sat Feb 02, 2019 5:50 pm

If you think an editor twisted your words to such an extent that the editorial no longer represents your intended meaning, you can withdraw it. It happens all the time. Hell, I even withdrew a letter to the editor from my local paper after the editor decided to cut out the more vituperative stuff about my (really really terrible) congressperson.

But honestly Rosenbaum has plenty of opportunities to stretch out and write at greater length about Bergman or anything else at greater length, if he wanted to do so. I'm sure any of the major film magazines would publish a longer piece by him if it was timely and/or interesting. But Rosenbaum either has chosen not to write longer essays or is no longer capable of doing so. His criticism these days largely consists of his "Global Discoveries" column in CinemaScope, which is just a series of stray observations about movies motivated by whatever he's watched at home over he past few months; occasional social-media posts of the kind that got him in trouble recently; and sometimes slightly revised versions of old pieces he posts on his website. So the idea that the Times did him a disservice by chipping away at his brilliant critique of Bergman until it was the husk of an argument rings a little false to me. All he seems capable of these days, alas, are these brief sorties. That wouldn't be so regrettable if he hadn't proved himself, in an earlier era, capable of better-than-decent writing on film (I think domino is being unfairly dismissive here; has he read any of Rosenbaum's books? they all have good stuff in them).

And anyway, Bordwell already critiqued Rosenbaum's Times piece in a way I think is fairly definitive. I'll quote the relevant passage at length:
David Bordwell wrote:More importantly, Jonathan’s critique is so glancing and elliptical that we can scarcely judge it as right or wrong. A few instances:

*Bergman’s movies aren’t “filmic expressions.” There’s no opportunity in an Op-Ed piece for Jonathan to explain what his conception of filmic expression is. Is he reviving the old idea of cinematic specificity—a kind of essence of cinema that good movies manifest? As opposed to theatrical cinema? I’ve argued elsewhere on this site that we should probably be pluralistic about all the possibilities of the medium.

*Bergman was reluctant to challenge “conventional film-going habits.” Why is that bad? Why is challenging them good? No time to explain, must move on….

*Bergman didn’t follow Dreyer in experimenting with space, or Bresson in experimenting with performance. Not more than .0001 % of Times readers have the faintest idea what Jonathan is talking about here. He would need to explain what he takes to be Dreyer’s experiments with space and Bresson’s experiments with performance.

In his reply to Roger Ebert, Jonathan has kindly referenced a book of mine, where I make the case that Dreyer experimented with cinematic space (and time). Right: I wrote a book. It takes a book to make such a case. It would take a book to explain and back up in an intellectually satisfying way the charges that Jonathan makes.

Popular journalism doesn’t allow you to cite sources, counterpose arguments, develop subtle cases. No time! No space! No room for specialized explanations that might mystify ordinary readers! So when the critic proposes a controversial idea, he has to be brief, blunt, and absolute. If pressed, and still under the pressure of time and column inches, he will wave us toward other writers, appeal to intuition and authority, say that a broadside is really just aimed to get us thinking and talking. But what have we gained by sprays of soundbites? Provocations are always welcome, but if they really aim to change our thinking, somebody has to work them through.
It's worth clarifying that Bordwell is no major Bergman fan (nor much of a fan of the other big midcentury auteurs like Antonioni and Fellini). So his criticism of Rosenbaum's piece isn't motivated by the desire to defend his cherished object of cinephilic love, but rather by his objection to the kind of hit-and-run discourse it exemplifies.

The question becomes -- if the sort of arguments Rosenbaum was alluding to in his op-ed required much greater length to explicate, much less thoroughly support, why bother publishing it in the first place? From the Times's point of view, the answer is obvious: more clicks (even or especially if they are hate-clicks). For Rosenbaum? An opportunity to sock it to the Bergmanphiles one last time? A chance to appear in the Grey Lady? I dunno....

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BenoitRouilly
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Re: Film Criticism

#1050 Post by BenoitRouilly » Sat Feb 02, 2019 7:03 pm

If a critic (whose job it is to master rhetorics and analysis) can be manipulated by an editor to such extent that the final piece lost any resemblance to the original intent, then who is equipped to resist to such manipulation? Who is the author? Editor or critic?
Like Domino said, he signed his Op-Ed, so he endorsed the paternity. It's lame to then blame the NYT for the loopholes in his arguments...
Last edited by BenoitRouilly on Sat Feb 02, 2019 8:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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