Great Moments in Uncriticism: Time & Newsweek in the 50s & 60s

I recently learned that throughout most of the 50s and 60s (and perhaps even earlier -- I'm not sure), the film reviews in both Time and Newsweek magazines were published without attribution. I'm not exactly sure why this was the case, and I've been unable to track down the reason for the anonymity. Certainly by the 60s film criticism (and critics) had become nearly as respectable as their theater or literary counterparts. There was Bosley Crowther in the New York Times, and of course Stanley Kauffmann and Andrew Sarris, to name but a few. So why did Time and Newsweek choose to not credit their writers?

Well, perhaps it was the writing itself, which was liberally sprinkled with the kind of hyperbole we've come to associate with TV news film critics. Here are several examples, beginning with a few that make use of the most peculiar culinary metaphors, not to mention a heaping dose of self-plagiarism:

"Like a giant cauldron the screen boils with life, and Kurosawa's telescopic lenses, spooning deep, lift the depths to the surface and hurl the whole mess in the spectator's face." (Yojimbo)

"Kurosawa, while not everybody's meat, does make telling use of telescopic lenses that drill deep into a scene, suck up all the action in sight and then spew it violently into the viewer's face." (Rashomon)

"With the help of a telescopic lens it plunges the spectator like spaghetti into the boiling core of every battle -- he goes in stiff with tension and comes out limp with fatigue." (The Four Days of Naples)

I'm not quite sure if these reviews are meant to be positive or negative, but the thought of Kurosawa scalding me with whatever he's got cooking in his cauldron is extremely unpleasant.  As for the limp noodles of Nanni Loy's film....I haven't a clue.

Then there are the gruesome allusions to suicide and murder:

"Il Grido means The Cry and the cry comes from the heart. Antonioni opens the aorta of his talent and releases the cold gray mainstream of his feeling." (Il Grido)

"The Bergman who made this picture still had akvavit in his veins. Intellect, that glittering and treacherous Snow Queen, had not yet struck her icy sliver into his heart." (Night is My Future)

Poetic for sure....but is it criticism?

Saving the best for last, there's this one....the crème de la crème:

"...a Polish thriller as sharp as a knife and as smooth as water." (Knife in the Water)

Now there's a line tailor-made for a marquee! Perhaps we should start a party game -- create pullquotes for classic arthouse cinema in the style of Jeffery Lyons, Peter Travers, etc. ("Jean Luc-Godard's Weekend is a fuel-injected fracas that's on a collision course to greatness!") Maybe not....