Film Critic Talks

This collection of interviews provides a virtual history of the journalistic practice of criticism in contemporary America. Susan Sontag proclaimed Stanley Kauffmann ¿one of our national treasures.¿ In this collection of interviews conducted by Bert Cardullo, himself a film critic, Stanley Kauffmann speaks both of the role of theater and film criticism in American culture and of the crisis he perceives within it¿the culture as well as the criticism. With style and erudition Kauffmann...
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This collection of interviews provides a virtual history of the journalistic practice of criticism in contemporary America. Susan Sontag proclaimed Stanley Kauffmann ¿one of our national treasures.¿ In this collection of interviews conducted by Bert Cardullo, himself a film critic, Stanley Kauffmann speaks both of the role of theater and film criticism in American culture and of the crisis he perceives within it¿the culture as well as the criticism. With style and erudition Kauffmann discusses many subjects in this book: film directors who emerged during his long tenure at The New Republic (e.g., Martin Scorsese and Federico Fellini), actors who performed on both stage and screen (e.g., Paul Newman and Robert Duvall), novels and their film adaptations, and the fractious relationship between Hollywood and the independent film movement. The precision, wit, and wisdom of Kauffmann's writing chime in his brilliant conversations as he speaks of sex, taste, and realism in the cinema, as well as the rise of film festival culture and government subsidy of the arts. Film Critic Talks reveals Kauffmann¿s sense of cultural mission¿and love of all the arts¿by showing how this critic applies to drama and film the same high standards he applies to fiction, poetry, music, and theater. The volume ends with a conversation from 2012 in celebration of Kauffmann's more than fifty-year tenure at The New Republic, where, at age ninety-seven, he continues to publish film reviews every week.