For the Love of Movies: Story of American Film Criticism (2009)
Director: Gerald Peary
Runtime: 80 minutes
Directed and written by Gerald Peary, Boston Phoenix critic and one-time Acting Curator of the Harvard Film Archive, For the Love of Movies offers a 100-year history of film criticism through clips from Hollywood movies and illuminating, entertaining interviews with many of America’s key rev
Gerald Peary says, "For the Love of Movies
is the first feature documentary to tell the rich, colorful, and
undeniably controversial story of the American film critic... I had to
sort of invent what I think is the history of film criticism, because
there wasn’t any formally written book on it."
Partly due to difficulties in getting financial backing, the documentary took nearly a decade to make. Peary says, "I guess one of the things that happened during that period was the so-called decline of print journalism... eight years ago, film criticism still seemed a viable profession... by now, there are over fifty critics who are made redundant”.
Filmmaker Magazine asks: What is the crisis of criticism? Gerald Peary replies: Simply that if you are a print critic you are in danger of losing your job at any moment. As newspapers are worried about dropping dead, it seems like film critics are a particular target. The film begins by saying, "There are 24 critics who have lost their jobs in the last several years," but since we finished the film, many more have lost their jobs. A lot of people are tagged with a title of ex-critic, but they were not ex when we filmed them just a few years ago. Sure, you can work on the web, but if you do that you're not getting paid much, or at all. And critics should be paid — this isn't an amateur thing to do, it's not like Sunday painting.
"It's a stop-the-bleeding movie," Peary tells Variety "I hope that those who watch the movie value criticism and will read it and demand it in their newspapers."
Peary laments, "Today, people select which movies to see based on advertising. Lots of excellent little pictures — foreign, independent, and documentaries — are passing through without being seen. The only way to get people to go to those films, because they have no advertising budgets, is reviews by good critics... We want people to read criticism. One way to motivate people to do that is by showing the critics’ faces and letting their voices be heard.” SOURCE: Wikipedia
Runtime: 80 minutes
Directed and written by Gerald Peary, Boston Phoenix critic and one-time Acting Curator of the Harvard Film Archive, For the Love of Movies offers a 100-year history of film criticism through clips from Hollywood movies and illuminating, entertaining interviews with many of America’s key rev
iewers,
including Roger Ebert (The Chicago Sun-Times), A.O. Scott (The New York
Times), Lisa Schwarzbaum (Entertainment Weekly), Wesley Morris (The
Boston Globe), and Harry Knowles (aintitcoolnews.com).
Narrated by Patricia Clarkson, the documentary explores the beginnings of criticism before The Birth of a Nation through the incendiary Pauline Kael-Andrew Sarris debates of the 60s and 70s, and follows the battle today between youthful one-liners and the print establishment.
Narrated by Patricia Clarkson, the documentary explores the beginnings of criticism before The Birth of a Nation through the incendiary Pauline Kael-Andrew Sarris debates of the 60s and 70s, and follows the battle today between youthful one-liners and the print establishment.
Partly due to difficulties in getting financial backing, the documentary took nearly a decade to make. Peary says, "I guess one of the things that happened during that period was the so-called decline of print journalism... eight years ago, film criticism still seemed a viable profession... by now, there are over fifty critics who are made redundant”.
Filmmaker Magazine asks: What is the crisis of criticism? Gerald Peary replies: Simply that if you are a print critic you are in danger of losing your job at any moment. As newspapers are worried about dropping dead, it seems like film critics are a particular target. The film begins by saying, "There are 24 critics who have lost their jobs in the last several years," but since we finished the film, many more have lost their jobs. A lot of people are tagged with a title of ex-critic, but they were not ex when we filmed them just a few years ago. Sure, you can work on the web, but if you do that you're not getting paid much, or at all. And critics should be paid — this isn't an amateur thing to do, it's not like Sunday painting.
"It's a stop-the-bleeding movie," Peary tells Variety "I hope that those who watch the movie value criticism and will read it and demand it in their newspapers."
Peary laments, "Today, people select which movies to see based on advertising. Lots of excellent little pictures — foreign, independent, and documentaries — are passing through without being seen. The only way to get people to go to those films, because they have no advertising budgets, is reviews by good critics... We want people to read criticism. One way to motivate people to do that is by showing the critics’ faces and letting their voices be heard.” SOURCE: Wikipedia
