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....

Comments

[Bruce]

If I remember right, in the 1960s there were no authors listed for any
articles in Time magazine, not just film criticism. This was also true
for The Economist as late as the early 1990s.

[MovieMan0283]

"The Bicycle Thief is the fever dream of a white supremacist who listens to way too much Wagner!"

--Futura II, filmbrain.com

[General Urko]

"8 1/2 is a 10!"

"The characters might not remember, but you won't be able to forget Last Year At Marienbad!"

"Late Spring has arrived just in time!"

"If tragedy has a name, it must be Ugetsu!"

[Noel Vera]

Armageddon is a big rock hurled through the sheet glass of civilization!

[Tom Russell]

Not sure if it qualifies, as the film is considerably more recent, and the pullquote isn't "created" but rather stolen from one of Mr. Travers's other reviews, but here goes:

"3 Women is babe-a-licious!"

(And that it is. I'd pay good money to see Shelly Duvall and Sissy Spacek in a trashy made-for-cable lesbian thriller.)

Maybe it's just my sense of humour, but I think I would also enjoy a contest in which one has to come up with pullquotes in the style of Armond White.

[Filmbrain]

General Urko -- the Ugetsu quote is brilliant.

Bruce -- is that indeed the case? I wasn't aware. It certainly would explain things a bit more.

Tom -- Armond pullquotes aka bile in ten words or less?

[Tom Russell]

Well, I was thinking less the highly-convoluted and barely-comprehensible bile and more the blatantly-ridiculous and barely-comprehensible oddities like: "Mr. 3000 is the best movie ever made about being black in America" and "if you don't like Mission to Mars, you don't understand the art of film", and its critical failure indicates a "cultural crisis". (Paraphrasing, of course.)

Bile's never any fun, but declaring fair-to-middling entertainments as great works of art to rival or supplant the western canon? That's fun, right? I think applying high art quotes to schlock is in the same spirit as applying schlocky quotes to high art.

Anyway, back to the challenge at hand:

-- Solaris is a mind-blowing sci-fi head trip! It's 165 minutes of AWESOME.

-- By the time it's over, you'll wish Mon Oncle was your uncle!

-- Until you've experienced Barry Lyndon, you have not yet recieved satisfaction!

-- My Left Foot will have you standing to cheer!

[Brian]

The Economist is still anonymous, thanks to, according to the website, "a belief that what is written is more important than who writes it".

"Audiences are going crazy for Titicut Follies!"

"See Satantango and you'll be dancing in the aisles!"

"The Conformist is the film that everyone's talking about!"

[Paris Hilton]

"Salò made me feel sixteen again."

"Oldboy left me speechless."

"Brown Bunny made me hungry for kielbasa."

[Tom Russell]

Brian: that Conformist quote is seven shades of terrific.

[Jimmy]

Well, since Tom already took Solaris:

"Stalker will haunt you long after you see it."

"Happiness is the feel-good hit of the summer!"

"The Big Lebowski bowled me over. Striking performances all around."

"Dr. Strangelove is da bomb!"

[Tom Russell]

Jimmy: if you can do better than my paltry stab at Solaris-- of the one's I've contributed thus far, it's the least amusing (I'm actually very proud of the Barry Lyndon one)-- then please do. :-)

[Jimmy]

[Special Solaris edition]

Actually, I thought "165 minutes of AWESOME" was pretty funny. Anyway:

Solaris is a shot in the arm for fans of Lem.

You'll come back again and again to see Solaris.

Solaris is an ocean of fun.

[JasonTHX]

"Blow-up will blow you away."