David Bordwell and “The Rhapsodes”: Old-School Film Critics

The sheer volume of movie reviews suggests that everyone and their mothers have become film critics. And, I mean that literally. I once worked as the managing editor of a video magazine. One day a young woman phoned to tell me that she and her mother would like to review movies for the magazine, particularly “old” movies. By that she meant movies from the 1970s. She assured me they were qualified because, “We watch a lot of movies from the 1970s.”

Before the Internet “democratized” film reviewing, critics like Ebert, Denby, Turan, and Rosenbaum wrote for newspapers, journals, or magazines. Movie-lovers of my generation read their reviews and essays because they were well written, and each review taught us something about film or culture. The critic I followed religiously was Dave Kehr, who wrote for the Chicago Reader, then the Chicago Tribune, before moving to one of the New York papers. He is currently a film curator at MoMA.

The proliferation of reviewing in recent years has watered down the art or craft of film criticism. Few reviewers are distinct writers, let alone talented ones. Cheap sarcasm has replaced style, particularly for young reviewers who look for reasons to dislike a film so they can jab at it. What they don’t realize is that this snarky discourse makes their reviews sound so similar they are virtually interchangeable. Film scholar David Bordwell’s latest book, The Rhapsodes: How 1940s Critics Changed American Film Culture, reminded me of the dismal state of contemporary reviewing because it chronicles the work of four film critics who not only knew how to write but who had distinctive voices and points of view.

Otis Ferguson, James Agee, Manny Farber, and Parker Tyler reviewed films during the Golden Age of Hollywood when the film industry ran like a well-oiled machine but movie reviewing was in its infancy. Bordwell posits these four writers as the beginning of modern film reviewing, because they established many of the concepts, terms, and perspectives that became conventions of the discipline. They influenced the next generation of reviewers, which included Pauline Kael, Andrew Sarris, and Stanley Kauffmann. Kael and her illustrious peers from the 1960s and 1970s would become the most famous film critics in history; Bordwell reveals how the four “Rhapsodes” from the 1940s set the stage for them.

I have read Ferguson, Agee, Farber, and Tyler, and I even wrote a blog post about Agee last year, but I never understand their significance in the development of film culture in this country. There is a history and evolution to film reviewing and pop culture commentary that I did not realize before reading this book. You might think that the history of movie reviewing would be dull—nothing but old opinions on old movies. But Bordwell offers a broad context to explain the big picture as well as small details to flesh out the specific styles and personalities of the individual critics.

Given the way our popular arts have become an accepted part of our cultural heritage, you might be surprised to learn that between the world wars, writers, critics, and social pundits denigrated mass culture. It was not accepted among high-brow writers, who found it culturally bankrupt. Lauded New Yorker editor Harold Ross once noted, “Movie reviewing is for women and fairies.” I never liked The New Yorker, even after it began including film reviews; Ross’s comment reveals an elitism or snobbery that still lingers among the pages. Agee, Farber, and Tyler were outside that critical establishment, writing in a journalistic style that was down to earth yet influenced by their experiences in the other arts. Modern slang combined with literary artistry to create a fresh discourse. They embraced cinema, providing context for readers and urging them to see something more than mere plot.

They also advocated an approach to film appreciation that contemporary reviewers have completely discarded. The four Rhapsodes understood that the parts of a movie were often greater than the whole. While condemning one aspect of the movie, they praised others. After all, films were a composite of star performance, visual storytelling, dialogue, and narrative; any one of those components might make the film worth seeing. As Manny Farber said, “You can find something good in any film.” His words echo those of surrealist artist Man Ray who once noted that in any bad film, there are at least ten good minutes, and if you thought about it, that was all there was in any good film. Today’s young web reviewers tend to be reductive in their processes of evaluation, ignoring the idea that popular movies consist of parts and layers; they reduce a film to a snarky plot summary, or a star rating.

 

What I liked best was the analysis and description of each critic’s writing style, not only the quality of the prose but how it reflected personality and perspective. The word “rhapsodes” is perfect to describe the four writers. As Bordwell explains, rhapsodes were “ancient reciters of verse who, inspired by the gods, became carried away.” The name speaks to the “exuberance of their vernacular prose.” James Agee, who wrote for The Nation and Time, was the most romantic in regard to his notions of life and art; he was a true bohemian. He wrote with a “feverish emotionalism,” according to Bordwell, though he preferred accuracy, authenticity, and naturalism in films. He also understood the power of cinematography to add meaning to a film. From his review of Georges Rouquier’s 1946 documentary Farrebique: “. . . the camera can do what nothing else in the world can do: can record unaltered reality; and can be made also to perceive, record, and communicate, in full unaltered power, the peculiar kinds of poetic vitality which blaze in every real thing. . . .” The latter phrase—“peculiar kinds of poetic vitality which blaze in every real thing”—is the richest of rhetoric.

I learned the most about Otis Ferguson, the “anti-intellectual intellectual” who wrote for The New Republic from 1934 to 1943. He enlisted during WWII and was killed in action in the Mediterranean. I liked Ferguson’s dry wit, which he slipped in when you least expected it, and never at the expense of the point. On Robert Montgomery in Yellow Jack: “[He] has a chance to swagger and get a bit tough and there are fine scenes horsing around with the men—I knew a sergeant of Marines like that once, damn him.”

Manny Farber filled Ferguson’s shoes at The New Republic, later signing with The Nation. Farber could also be witty, but his form of humor tended to be paradoxical, which is clever and fun to read: The Postman Always Rings Twice “is almost too terrible to walk out of.” Or, “Stalag 17 is a crude, cliché-ridden glimpse of a Nazi prison camp that I hated to see end.” Farber was also an art critic, and while he did not review movies as though they were paintings, he was adept at describing the impact of visual design on content.

Parker Tyler also wrote about art as well as literature and film. He even composed poetry. The least conventional of the four Rhapsodes, Tyler is the most difficult to describe, because he is least interested in traditional story and character, and his writing style is not as down to earth or journalistic. From his review of The Glass Key: “. . . if there ever was a mannequin gangster, he was Alan Ladd in The Glass Key, and if he ever reached for the upper crust and took down a mannequin moll to load his mannequin gat for him, she was Veronica Lake. What in a less preternatural atmosphere might pass for restraint is in Miss Lake simple lack of animation; one is startled that she can talk.” Tyler’s claim to fame was his attraction to reflectionism, which is the idea that pop culture represents some aspect of society. He specifically applied psychoanalysis and myth studies to film to arrive at deeper interpretations.

Like the Rhapsodes, David Bordwell’s writing style is at once easy to absorb yet filled with unique twists of phrases and deftly worded descriptions. In the chapter on Ferguson, he defines the style and nature of the Hollywood film. In a masterstroke of precise, exact writing, he notes,“. . . cinema was a storytelling medium committed to lowercase naturalism and crisp, efficient technique.” I am going to steal this description for one of my classes in the upcoming semester.

The Rhapsodes: How 1940s Critics Changed American Film Culture should appeal to Hollywood-movie lovers who will be fascinated by what the four critics had to say about familiar classics, while history buffs will appreciate the overview of the culture scene between the wars. And, anyone interested in the craft of writing will be nostalgic for an era when American magazines and journals fostered good writing.