I’ve mentioned to many acquaintances my distaste for Roger Ebert’s binary thumb system of film reviewing, and I often tend to have a knee-jerk reaction against his overall film ratings. On the other hand, his criticism (rather than his reviewing) is highly sound, readable, and I wish he’d do more of it.<\/p>\n
Just to be clear, reviewing is the week-to-week activity of watching and recommending (or not recommending) films, especially new releases, to audiences that haven’t yet seen the films. It’s intended to tell you whether or not you should go see a given film, whether a film is good or bad. Criticism is more indepth analysis of a film intended to help those who have already seen a film to better understand or appreciate it (or not). Criticism is not inherently negative; in fact, it’s often not evaluative at all. Rather, it’s analytical.<\/p>\n
On his blog<\/a>, Ebert recently posted an article entitled “How to Read a Movie”<\/a>, in which he gives a few basics of visual composition, explaining how he goes through a film with his students shot by shot. This is criticism, and I’m always thankful when he writes something like this. It reminds me that there’s so much more to him than thumbs.<\/p>\n He talks about how we instinctively understand the way shots are laid out and blocked (people moving to the left feels negative, while people moving to the right seems positive – as I read this, I happened to be watching 12 Angry Men<\/i> and noted that when the jurors leave the courtroom to deliver their “not guilty” verdict, they’re walking, yes, to the right), then gives an example from Hitchcock’s Notorious<\/i>. This is right when spy Cary Grant learns that he’s basically condemned Ingrid Bergman to sleep with the enemy for the sake of gathering intelligence, and that she’s willing to do it.<\/p>\n In the Rio office of U.S. intelligence, Grant’s chief is positioned on the strong axis. Grant enters and talks to him, standing on the right (positive). Bergman enters, and begins to discuss her relationship with Rains [the enemy]. As she speaks, Grant walks to the left of the composition. She continues. He turns his back to us. We all instinctively read this as negative\/rejecting\/angry. Bergman goes into still more detail. Grant walks into the background. Wow. Now the picture has the intelligence chief as the stable presence on the strong axis, Bergman in the positive right foreground, Grant in the negative left background, and the “movement” from right front to left back, underlining the central emotional reality of the film, which will inform all of Grant’s behavior.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n These are things that we as viewers subconsciously “get”, but having someone go through a scene like this and explain why<\/i> we have the reactions we do (or at least, what within the shot triggers the reactions we have; I suppose it would take a psychologist to take the next step – a direction some film criticism has gone) is invaluable. In my experience with Ebert (to be honest, I rarely read his current reviews all the way through, in large part because I simply don’t like reviews as much as criticism), he tends to do this more in writing about older film, probably because of the seen\/haven’t seen dilemma – it’s difficult to do quality criticism if you’re worried about spoiling the film for an audience that hasn’t seen it yet. His The Great Movies<\/i> books are excellent, as are several of his articles about criticism collected in Alone in the Dark<\/i>. I just wish his popular legacy could be those rather than his thumbs.<\/p>\n (Read the rest of the post and comments as well; I only quoted a bit, and it’ll make more sense in context. If the general topic is interesting, David Bordwell has written a number of good books on visual style and cinematic staging, and James Monaco’s How to Read a Film<\/i> is a touchstone.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’ve mentioned to many acquaintances my distaste for Roger Ebert’s binary thumb system of film reviewing, and I often tend to have a knee-jerk reaction against his overall film ratings. On the other hand, his criticism (rather than his reviewing) is highly sound, readable, and I wish he’d do more of it. Just to be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[991,990],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":34172,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2014\/06\/american-movie-critics-the-introduction-phillip-lopate\/","url_meta":{"origin":1305,"position":0},"title":"American Movie Critics: The Introduction (Phillip Lopate)","author":"Jandy","date":"June 19, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Reading David Bordwell's series of posts on criticism in the 1940s made me want to dive back into reading criticism, so I've pulled my copy of American Movie Critics back out (I'd previously made it into the middle of the Ferguson section) and started over, because I don't remember any\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "American Movie Critics"","block_context":{"text":"American Movie Critics","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/american-movie-critics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/American-Movie-Critics-feat.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":365,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2007\/04\/literary-criticism-rant-warning\/","url_meta":{"origin":1305,"position":1},"title":"Literary Criticism (rant warning)","author":"Jandy","date":"April 19, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Literary criticism ruins books. It tears them apart and glues them together again with the critic's pet theory. It reduces character to symbol and narrative to trope. It increases cynicism and decreases enjoyment. It makes every book about something else. It creates a divide between \"critical readers\" and ordinary ones\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Books and Reading"","block_context":{"text":"Books and Reading","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/books\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":999,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2008\/02\/film-criticism-emotional-or-analytical\/","url_meta":{"origin":1305,"position":2},"title":"Film Criticism – Emotional or Analytical?","author":"Jandy","date":"February 6, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Jim Emerson has an intriguing post up on his scaners::blog about whether film criticism can be or even should be objective. I'm somewhere in the middle on the issue; like many of the commenters (read the comments, too; a lot of the good discussions is down there), I usually find\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Film"","block_context":{"text":"Film","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":33571,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2014\/09\/against-evaluative-criticism-a-personal-manifesto\/","url_meta":{"origin":1305,"position":3},"title":"Against Evaluative Criticism: A Personal Manifesto","author":"Jandy","date":"September 2, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"[Evaluation is] practically worthless for a critic. The last thing I want to know is whether you like it or not: the problems of writing are after that. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think it has any importance; it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s one of those derelict appendages of criticism. Criticism has nothing to do with hierarchies.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Film"","block_context":{"text":"Film","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/statler-waldorf-feat.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":34398,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2014\/07\/how-to-find-your-film-critic\/","url_meta":{"origin":1305,"position":4},"title":"How to Find Your Film Critic","author":"Jandy","date":"July 25, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"The death of film criticism is proclaimed every year or so these days, as moviegoers continually declare film critics irrelevant, and box office receipts seem to be totally unrelated to critical consensus. Whenever the topic comes up, one point generally made in response is that the best way to get\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Film"","block_context":{"text":"Film","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/fc-keaton.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":32793,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2013\/06\/top-ten-roger-eberts-great-movies\/","url_meta":{"origin":1305,"position":5},"title":"Top Ten: Roger Ebert’s Great Movies","author":"Jandy","date":"June 18, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Today would have been Roger Ebert's 71st birthday had he not recently passed away. What better way to celebrate his life than to remember the films that he singled out for particular praise in his Great Movies series? Ebert did not rank these films; in fact, he added them only\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Film"","block_context":{"text":"Film","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/ebert.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1305"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1305"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1305\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}