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Regarding Film: Criticism and Comment by Stanley Kauffmann
In this collection of his film writings, Kauffmann discusses films released after 1993, including films from major established directors, works from the iconoclastic world of independent cinema and the best of world cinema. In other essays, he muses on cinematic adaptations of Mozart's operas, explores changing public attitudes toward film as an art form, looks at the possibilities of accurately dramatizing the Holocaust and recalls important figures in film history.
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First published April 1, 2001
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July 10, 2022
Amazon review
This charming man
For more than four decades Stanley Kauffmann has been the film critic for the New Republic. Now after three decades of the reign of Martin Peretz over that journal he is that rarest of creatures, a truly non-ideological critic. He is consistently sensible and sane, and always worthy to be read. For those who think that Roger Ebert is too vulnerable to the slick products of Hollywood, or that the late Pauline Kael was too voluble and dogmatic, Kauffmann is always available as an alternative.
This collection of reviews covers 1993-2000 and is somewhat more selective than his previous books. There is praise of Abbas Kiarostami and much enthusiasm for Emma Thompson. Michelangelo Antonioni is given a final review, there is a touching obituary for Marcello Mastroianni, and another touching, and very brief, one for James Stewart. Neil LaBute and Todd Solondz are praised for their ruthlessly unsentimental approach. Pulp Fiction is treated somewhat warrily. Forrest Gump goes completely unmentioned. Fargo and All About my Mother get very guarded praise. Eyes Wide Shut and The End of the Affair are subjected to special criticism. Among foreign films Kauffmann singles out for praise Ken Loach, Gianni Amelio, Zhang Yimou, Daniel Bergman's film of his father Ingmar's autobiography, and Erick Zonca.
I find myself disagreeing more with Kauffmann in this collection. I myself do not think that Amistad is a better film than Kundun. Kundun may be excellent, it may be overly respectful, but in my view Amistad is little more than competent and worthy. It strikes me as odd that in American Beauty Kauffmann should praise Annette Bening's acting, since the script caricatures her character as a spiteful gargoyle. (Still, Kauffmann has the movie right: "at the finish of the picture, we're left feeling that Ball has had a trial run with them: now he needs to go back and really use them to some enlightening and organically whole purpose.") At one point in his praise of Schindler's List, he notes the scene of a child hiding in a latrine and says it is mememorable in the same way as the famous photograph of a child being marched away from the Warsaw ghetto. I would argue that Spielberg's shot cannot be memorable as the original photo, since it is obviously been too clearly designed to resemble it. Another weakness of the collection is that there are fewer dismissive reviews. His criticism is actually one of his strengths, as one sees in the pans he wrote last year of Moulin Rouge and The Man Who Wasn't There.
Nevertheless, Kauffmann is an intelligent and literate man, and he is properly pessimistic about the future of film, as the students he tought earlier in the last decade are too impatient and spoiled to recognize the virtues of silent movies, or black and white movies or subtitled ones. They often have no sense of history, either of the movies as an art form or of the wider society. Kauffmann, who quotes Shaw and Graham Greene several times to good effect, is depressed but not desponsdent. And so one should look at, among other things, a fine essay on adapting Mozart to the screen, a surprisingly undeferrential review of Touch of Evil, and a review of the European background and soil of Billy Wilder.
pnotley
This charming man
For more than four decades Stanley Kauffmann has been the film critic for the New Republic. Now after three decades of the reign of Martin Peretz over that journal he is that rarest of creatures, a truly non-ideological critic. He is consistently sensible and sane, and always worthy to be read. For those who think that Roger Ebert is too vulnerable to the slick products of Hollywood, or that the late Pauline Kael was too voluble and dogmatic, Kauffmann is always available as an alternative.
This collection of reviews covers 1993-2000 and is somewhat more selective than his previous books. There is praise of Abbas Kiarostami and much enthusiasm for Emma Thompson. Michelangelo Antonioni is given a final review, there is a touching obituary for Marcello Mastroianni, and another touching, and very brief, one for James Stewart. Neil LaBute and Todd Solondz are praised for their ruthlessly unsentimental approach. Pulp Fiction is treated somewhat warrily. Forrest Gump goes completely unmentioned. Fargo and All About my Mother get very guarded praise. Eyes Wide Shut and The End of the Affair are subjected to special criticism. Among foreign films Kauffmann singles out for praise Ken Loach, Gianni Amelio, Zhang Yimou, Daniel Bergman's film of his father Ingmar's autobiography, and Erick Zonca.
I find myself disagreeing more with Kauffmann in this collection. I myself do not think that Amistad is a better film than Kundun. Kundun may be excellent, it may be overly respectful, but in my view Amistad is little more than competent and worthy. It strikes me as odd that in American Beauty Kauffmann should praise Annette Bening's acting, since the script caricatures her character as a spiteful gargoyle. (Still, Kauffmann has the movie right: "at the finish of the picture, we're left feeling that Ball has had a trial run with them: now he needs to go back and really use them to some enlightening and organically whole purpose.") At one point in his praise of Schindler's List, he notes the scene of a child hiding in a latrine and says it is mememorable in the same way as the famous photograph of a child being marched away from the Warsaw ghetto. I would argue that Spielberg's shot cannot be memorable as the original photo, since it is obviously been too clearly designed to resemble it. Another weakness of the collection is that there are fewer dismissive reviews. His criticism is actually one of his strengths, as one sees in the pans he wrote last year of Moulin Rouge and The Man Who Wasn't There.
Nevertheless, Kauffmann is an intelligent and literate man, and he is properly pessimistic about the future of film, as the students he tought earlier in the last decade are too impatient and spoiled to recognize the virtues of silent movies, or black and white movies or subtitled ones. They often have no sense of history, either of the movies as an art form or of the wider society. Kauffmann, who quotes Shaw and Graham Greene several times to good effect, is depressed but not desponsdent. And so one should look at, among other things, a fine essay on adapting Mozart to the screen, a surprisingly undeferrential review of Touch of Evil, and a review of the European background and soil of Billy Wilder.
pnotley
August 12, 2019
Mostly film reviews from the 1990s
It is with reluctance and of course some pleasure that I approach a review of a book by a film critic, being a film critic myself. I am not however anywhere near as knowledgeable about film as is Stanley Kaufmann nor am I as fancy with the wordsmithing. What I do well in a haphazard way is react to film as character and story with some reasonable awareness of the politics and the culture of the production. Professor Kaufmann on the other hand is deeply learned about all things cinema.
Regarding Film is a collection of reviews written mostly for The New Republic during the 1990s along with some other pieces from the Yale Review that he calls "Comments," and some movie book reviews. His acidic and sometimes pompous comments can be delightful and insightful, if one agrees with him, or dreary and dreadful and even tedious if one does not. A case in point is his critique of Oliver Stone's Nixon (1996) in which he chirps enthusiastically about Anthony Hopkins's performance while slyly denigrating what I think is one of Stone's finest works. Kaufmann writes, "...despite Stone's mercurial gifts, the film does not become an artistic whole; it remains an examination of characteristics." He adds, "What's missing is what Stone's best films have had: a subtext, a large theme evoked by the action on the screen." Without such a subtext, Kaufmann concludes, the film is "not much more than the series of events presented--thus, in any deep sense, purposeless." (p. 54)
It is good for a movie critic to read a somewhat dismissive review of a film that he the critic found outstanding, because now the critic knows how some readers of his reviews might feel when he disses one of their favs. But what I found annoying here is that in an addendum written a couple of weeks later, Kaufmann tells us that "Another visit to Nixon confirmed my admiration for it as filmmaking..." Well, what is it? I guess it's a "purposeless" exercise in admirable filmmaking! Personally I thought the examination of Nixon the man as opposed to Nixon the politician or Nixon the leader of the free world, was a fine subtext, if you will, with a clear purpose, allowing us to see how Nixon's personality shaped his governance.
More to my liking is Kaufmann's review of Adrian Lyne's Lolita (1998), in which he notes that Lyne's film is truer to the novel than the celebrated Kubrick film from 1962, but not necessarily a better film, and in which he does a nice job of critiquing Jeremy Irons's interesting but melancholy performance. I also liked his review of Shakespeare in Love (1998) and the peripheral knowledge he brought to the review. Also excellent, insightful and interesting to read is his review of The Truman Show (1998). Most of the reviews are in fact interesting to read regardless of how one might feel about his proclivities or analyses.
The most striking disagreement I have with Kaufmann concerns his review of Stanley Kubrick's last film Eyes Wide Shut (1999). I don't think Kaufmann understood the film and I was offended by the eagerness with which he disparages the work of a great artist. Kaufmann even gives us, in a long preamble to the actual review, the apparent reasons for his inability to appreciate what Kubrick was trying to do in his later years. Kaufmann implies simultaneously that he had a falling out with Kubrick over (1) Kaufmann's negative reviews of Kubrick's later films, and/or (2) because Kubrick disappointed Kaufmann on two occasions by not agreeing to some professional invitation that Kaufmann had extended. I find it surprising that Kaufmann could be so blatantly transparent, but maybe I should appreciate his candor.
I was also not pleased with his review of American Beauty (1999). I don't think he understood this film either. He calls it a "supposedly realistic film" (p. 149), but it is not. It is a satire, almost a burlesque, and a very funny one at that. However if a viewer thinks (as did many viewers from middle America who also did not like the film) that it is some kind of attempted realism, then perhaps none of it is very funny.
Curiously this book does not list the films reviewed in a table of contents. The titles appear in an index, but the reader is forced to flip through the book to see which titles are actually reviewed and which are merely mentioned.
Kaufmann's erudition is not to be questioned. His scholar's knowledge of film is admirable and helps to make his reviews very much worthwhile; but his strength as a film critic may be in his understanding and appreciation of actors. I may find fault with his interpretation of a film or his appreciation of a director's artistry, but seldom do I differ with his discernment about the skill and the effort of the actors. As Shakespeare was an actor's writer, Kaufmann is an actor's critic--well, a good actor's critic. He can be quite short with what he sees as a sub par performance.
--Dennis Littrell, author of the mystery novel, “Teddy and Teri”
It is with reluctance and of course some pleasure that I approach a review of a book by a film critic, being a film critic myself. I am not however anywhere near as knowledgeable about film as is Stanley Kaufmann nor am I as fancy with the wordsmithing. What I do well in a haphazard way is react to film as character and story with some reasonable awareness of the politics and the culture of the production. Professor Kaufmann on the other hand is deeply learned about all things cinema.
Regarding Film is a collection of reviews written mostly for The New Republic during the 1990s along with some other pieces from the Yale Review that he calls "Comments," and some movie book reviews. His acidic and sometimes pompous comments can be delightful and insightful, if one agrees with him, or dreary and dreadful and even tedious if one does not. A case in point is his critique of Oliver Stone's Nixon (1996) in which he chirps enthusiastically about Anthony Hopkins's performance while slyly denigrating what I think is one of Stone's finest works. Kaufmann writes, "...despite Stone's mercurial gifts, the film does not become an artistic whole; it remains an examination of characteristics." He adds, "What's missing is what Stone's best films have had: a subtext, a large theme evoked by the action on the screen." Without such a subtext, Kaufmann concludes, the film is "not much more than the series of events presented--thus, in any deep sense, purposeless." (p. 54)
It is good for a movie critic to read a somewhat dismissive review of a film that he the critic found outstanding, because now the critic knows how some readers of his reviews might feel when he disses one of their favs. But what I found annoying here is that in an addendum written a couple of weeks later, Kaufmann tells us that "Another visit to Nixon confirmed my admiration for it as filmmaking..." Well, what is it? I guess it's a "purposeless" exercise in admirable filmmaking! Personally I thought the examination of Nixon the man as opposed to Nixon the politician or Nixon the leader of the free world, was a fine subtext, if you will, with a clear purpose, allowing us to see how Nixon's personality shaped his governance.
More to my liking is Kaufmann's review of Adrian Lyne's Lolita (1998), in which he notes that Lyne's film is truer to the novel than the celebrated Kubrick film from 1962, but not necessarily a better film, and in which he does a nice job of critiquing Jeremy Irons's interesting but melancholy performance. I also liked his review of Shakespeare in Love (1998) and the peripheral knowledge he brought to the review. Also excellent, insightful and interesting to read is his review of The Truman Show (1998). Most of the reviews are in fact interesting to read regardless of how one might feel about his proclivities or analyses.
The most striking disagreement I have with Kaufmann concerns his review of Stanley Kubrick's last film Eyes Wide Shut (1999). I don't think Kaufmann understood the film and I was offended by the eagerness with which he disparages the work of a great artist. Kaufmann even gives us, in a long preamble to the actual review, the apparent reasons for his inability to appreciate what Kubrick was trying to do in his later years. Kaufmann implies simultaneously that he had a falling out with Kubrick over (1) Kaufmann's negative reviews of Kubrick's later films, and/or (2) because Kubrick disappointed Kaufmann on two occasions by not agreeing to some professional invitation that Kaufmann had extended. I find it surprising that Kaufmann could be so blatantly transparent, but maybe I should appreciate his candor.
I was also not pleased with his review of American Beauty (1999). I don't think he understood this film either. He calls it a "supposedly realistic film" (p. 149), but it is not. It is a satire, almost a burlesque, and a very funny one at that. However if a viewer thinks (as did many viewers from middle America who also did not like the film) that it is some kind of attempted realism, then perhaps none of it is very funny.
Curiously this book does not list the films reviewed in a table of contents. The titles appear in an index, but the reader is forced to flip through the book to see which titles are actually reviewed and which are merely mentioned.
Kaufmann's erudition is not to be questioned. His scholar's knowledge of film is admirable and helps to make his reviews very much worthwhile; but his strength as a film critic may be in his understanding and appreciation of actors. I may find fault with his interpretation of a film or his appreciation of a director's artistry, but seldom do I differ with his discernment about the skill and the effort of the actors. As Shakespeare was an actor's writer, Kaufmann is an actor's critic--well, a good actor's critic. He can be quite short with what he sees as a sub par performance.
--Dennis Littrell, author of the mystery novel, “Teddy and Teri”
March 20, 2025
Stanley was born in 1915. IOW, he was 24 y/o when GWTW came out. He was 57 years old when the Godfather came out. He was 20 years older than Elvis. And 75 in 1990. He should have hung it up when he reached 70. This shows him to be Dated, out of touch, and feeble compared to his earlier work.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews