Kael Circles and Squares

8/12/2019 Kael Circles and Squares

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Circles and Squares

Author(s): Pauline Kael

Source: Film Quarterly, Vol. 16, No. 3, (Spring, 1963), pp. 12-26

Published by: University of California Press

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1210726

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12

PAULINEAELi r c l e s n d S q u a r e s

In 1957, in the Paris monthly "Cahiers du Cinema," Frangois Truffautproposed for the magazine a "politique des auteurs"--a policy of focussing criticismprimarily upon directors, and specifically upon certain chosen directors whoseindividuality of style qualified them, in the eyes of the Cahiers "team," as

"auteurs"'--creators in the personal sense we accept for other arts. This doctrinegalvanized the "Cahiers" polemicists, and lent some of the impetus which helpedTruffaut, Godard, and many other young men break through as film-makers(and aspiring "auteurs"). In the years since then, the doctrinehas gained adherents in England, chiefly around the magazine "Movie," and to someextent in the United States, through the "New York Film Bulletin" and"Film Culture." In its homeland the politique has led to many peculiar judgments,especially of American film-makers: it is Samuel Fuller, Nicholas Ray, and OttoPreminger who figure as the gods of this new pantheon. The results upon exportare turning out to be even more peculiar on occasion. The time seems ripe,therefore, for a direct examination of the Anglo-Saxon version of the "politique desauteurs." Is it, in fact, a new and stimulating approach to films, which ought todisplace the tradition of criticism developed by the "Sequence" and "Sight &Sound" writers? Pauline Kael offers a resounding negative view; and we anticipatein our next issue a rejoinder by Andrew Sarris, in whose writings the politiquehas had its most extended and thoughtful American presentation.

JOYSANDSARRIS".... the firstpremiseof the auteur theory is thetechnical competence of a director as a criterionof value.... The second premise of the auteurtheory is the distinguishable personality of thedirector as a criterion of value .... The third and

ultimate premise of the auteur theory is concernedwith interior meaning, the ultimate glory of thecinema as an art. Interiormeaning is extrapolatedfrom the tension between a director's personalityand his material."-Andrew Sarris,"Notes on the Auteur Theoryin 1962," Film Culture, Winter 62/3

"Sometimes a great deal of corn must behusked to yield a few kernels of internalmeaning. I recently saw Every Night atEight, one of the many maddeningly rou-tine films Raoul Walsh has directed in hislong career. This 1935 effort featuredGeorge Raft, Alice Faye, Frances Langfordand Patsy Kelly in one of those familiarplots about radio shows of the period. Thefilm keeps moving along in the pleasantlyunpretentious manner one would expect ofWalsh until one incongruously intense scenewith George Raft thrashing about in his


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CIRCLESND SQUARES 13:sleep, revealing his inner fears in mumblingdream talk. The girl he loves comes intothe room in the midst of his unconsciousavowals of feeling, and listens sympatheti-cally. This unusual scene was later ampli-fied in High Sierra with Humphrey Bogartand Ida Lupino. The point is that one of thescreen's most virile directors employed anessentially feminine narrative device todramatize the emotional vulnerability ofhis heroes. If I had not been aware ofWalsh in Every Night at Eight, the cruciallink to High Sierra would have passed un-noticed. Such are the joys of the auteurtheory." Sarris, bid.

Perhaps a little more corn should be husked;perhaps, for example, we can husk away theword "internal" (is "internal meaning" anydifferent from "meaning"?). We might askwhy the link is "crucial"? Is it because thedevice was "incongruously intense" in EveryNight at Eight and so demonstrated a try forsomething deeper on Walsh's part? But if hismerit is his "pleasantly unpretentious manner"(which is to say, I suppose, that, recognizingthe limitations of the script, he wasn't tryingto do much) then the incongruous device wasprobably a misconceived attempt that dis-turbed the manner-like a bad playwright in-terrupting a comedy scene because he cannotresist the opportunity to tug at your heart-strings. We might also ask why this narrativedevice is "essentially feminine": is it more fem-inine than masculine to be asleep, or to talkin one's sleep, or to reveal feelings? Or, pos-sibly, does Sarris regard the device as femininebecause the listening woman becomes a sym-pathetic figure and emotional understanding is,in this "virile" context, assumed to be essen-tially feminine? Perhaps only if one accepts thenarrow notions of virility so common in ouraction films can this sequence be seen as"essentially feminine," and it is amusing thata critic can both support these clich6s of themale world and be so happy when they areviolated.

This is how we might quibble with a differ-ent kind of critic but we would never get any-

where with Sarris if we tried to examine whathe is saying sentence by sentence.So let us ask, what is the meaning of thepassage? Sarris has noticed that in High Sierra(not a very good movie) Raoul Walsh repeatedan uninteresting and obvious device that hehad earlier used in a worse movie. And forsome inexplicable reason, Sarris concludes thathe would not have had this joy of discoverywithout the auteur theory.But in every art form, critics traditionallynotice and point out the way the artists bor-row from themselves (as well as from others)and how the same devices, techniques, andthemes reappear in their work. This is obviousin listening to music, seeing plays, readingnovels, watching actors, etc.; we take it forgranted that this is how we perceive the devel-opment or the decline of an artist (and it maybe necessary to point out to auteur critics thatrepetition without development is decline).When you see Hitchock's Saboteur there is nodoubt that he drew heavily and clumsily fromThe 39 Steps, and when you see North byNorthwest you can see that he is once againtoying with the ingredients of The 39 Steps -and apparently having a good time with them.Would Sarris not notice the repetition in theWalsh films without the auteur theory? Orshall we take the more cynical view that with-out some commitment to Walsh as an auteur,

he probably wouldn't be spending his timelooking at these movies?If we may be permitted a literary analogy,we can visualize Sarris researching in thearchives of The Saturday Evening Post, tracingthe development of Clarence Budington Kel-land, who, by the application of something likethe auteur theory, would emerge as a muchmore important writer than Dostoyevsky; forin Kelland's case Sarris' three circles, the threepremises of the auteur theory, have been con-sistently congruent. Kelland is technically com-petent (everl "pleasantly unpretentious"), nowriter has a more "distinguishable personality,"and if "interior meaning" is what can be extrap-olated from, say Hatari or Advise and Con-sent or What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?


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14 SCIRCLESNDSQUARESthen surely Kelland's stories with their attemptsto force a bit of character and humor into thefamiliar plot outlines are loaded with it. Poormisguided Dostoyevsky, too full of what hehas to say to bother with "technical compe-tence," tackling important themes in eachwork (surely the worst crime in the auteurbook) and with his almost incredible unity ofpersonality and material leaving you nothingto extrapolate from, he'll never make it. Ifthe editors of Movie ranked authors the waythey do directors, Dostoyevsky would prob-ably be in that almost untouchable categoryof the "ambitious."It should be pointed out that Sarris' defenseof the auteur theory is based not only onaesthetics but on a rather odd pragmatic state-ment: "Thus to argue against the auteur theoryin America is to assume that we have anyoneof Bazin's sensibility and dedication to providean alternative, and we simply don't." Which Itake to mean that the auteur theory is neces-sary in the absence of a critic who wouldn'tneed it. This is a new approach to aesthetics,and I hope Sarris' humility does not camou-flage his double-edged argument. If his aesthet-ics is based on expediency, then it may be ex-pedient to point out that it takes extraordinaryintelligence and discrimination and taste touse any theory in the arts, and that withoutthose qualities, a theory becomes a rigidformula (which is indeed what is happeningamong auteur critics). The greatness of criticslike Bazin in France and Agee in America mayhave something to do with their using theirfull range of intelligence and intuition, ratherthan relying on formulas. Criticism is an art,not a science, and a critic who follows ruleswill fail in one of his most important functions:perceiving what is original and important innew work and helping others to see."THEOUTER IRCLE"

".... the firstpremiseof the auteurtheory isthe technical competence of a director as acriterion of value."This seems less the premise of a theory than

a commonplace of judgment, as Sarris himselfindicates when he paraphrases it as, "A greatdirector has to be at least a good director."But this commonplace, though it sounds rea-sonable and basic, is a shaky premise: some-times the greatest artists in a medium by-passor violate the simple technical competence thatis so necessary for hacks. For example, it isdoubtful if Antonioni could handle a routinedirectorial assignment of the type at whichJohn Sturges is so proficient (Escape from FortBravo or Bad Day at Black Rock), but surelyAntonioni's L'Avventura is the work of a greatdirector. And the greatness of a director likeCocteau has nothing to do with mere technicalcompetence: his greatness is in being able toachieve his own personal expression and style.And just as there were writers like Melvilleor Dreiser who triumphed over various kindsof technical incompetence, and who were, asartists, incomparably greater than the faciletechnicians of their day, a new great film direc-tor may appear whose very greatness is in hisstruggling toward grandeur or in massive ac-cumulation of detail. An artist who is not agood technician can indeed create new stand-ards, because standards of technical compe-tence are based on comparisons with workalready done.Just as new work in other arts is oftenattacked because it violates the accepted stand-ards and thus seems crude and ugly and in-coherent, great new directors are very likelyto be condemned precisely on the grounds thatthey're not even good directors, that they don'tknow their "business." Which, in some cases,is true, but does it matter when that "business"has little to do with what they want to expressin films? It may even be a hindrance, leadingthem to banal slickness, instead of discoveryof their own methods. For some, at least,Cocteau may be right: "The only techniqueworth having is the technique you invent foryourself." The director must be judged on thebasis of what he produces - his films - andif he can make great films without knowing thestandard methods, without the usual craftsman-ship of the "good director," then that is the


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CIRCLESND SQUARES 15way he works. I would amend Sarris' premiseto "In works of a lesser rank, technical com-petence can help to redeem the weaknesses ofthe material." In fact it seems to be preciselythis category that the auteur critics are mostinterested in - the routine material that a goodcraftsman can make into a fast and enjoyablemovie. What, however, makes the auteur criticsso incomprehensible, is not their preference forworks of this category (in this they merelyfollow the lead of children who also prefersimple action films and westerns and horrorfilms to works that make demands on their un-derstanding) but their truly astonishing in-ability to exercise taste and judgment withintheir area of preference. Movie-going kids are,I think, much more reliable guides to this kindof movie than the auteur critics: every kidI've talked to knows that Henry Hathaway'sNorth to Alaska was a surprisingly funny,entertaining movie and Hatari (classified as a"masterpiece" by half the Cahiers Conseil desDix, Peter Bogdanovich, and others) was aterrible bore."THEMIDDLEIRCLE"

".... the second premiseof the auteurtheoryis the distinguishable personality of thedirector as a criterion of value."Up to this point there has really been notheory, and now, when Sarris begins to workon his foundation, the entire edifice of civilizedstandards of taste collapses while he's tackingdown his floorboards. Traditionally, in any art,the personalities of all those involved in a pro-duction have been a factor in judgment, butthat the distinguishability of personality shouldin itself be a criterion of value completely con-fuses normal judgment. The smell of a skunkis more distinguishable than the perfume ofa rose; does that make it better? Hitchcock'spersonality is certainly more distinguishable inDial M for Murder, Rear Window, Vertigo,than Carol Reed's in The Stars Look Down,Odd Man Out, The Fallen Idol, The ThirdMan, An Outcast of the Islands, if for no other

reason than because Hitchcock repeats whileReed tackles new subject matter. But how doesthis distinguishable personality function as acriterion for judging the works? We recognizethe hands of Carn6 and Prbvert in Le Jour seLove, but that is not what makes it a beautifulfilm; we can just as easily recognize theirhands in Quai des Brumes-which is not sucha good film. We can recognize that Le Plaisirand The Earrings of Madame De are both thework of Ophuls, but Le Plaisir is not a greatfilm, and Madame De is.

Often the works in which we are most awareof the personality of the director are his worstfilms-when he falls back on the devices he hasalready done to death. When a famous direc-tor makes a good movie, we look at the movie,we don't think about the director's personality;when he makes a stinker we notice his familiartouches because there's not much else to watch.When Preminger makes an expert, entertainingwhodunit like Laura, we don't look for hispersonality (it has become part of the textureof the film); when he makes an atrocity likeWhirlpool, there's plenty of time to look forhis "personality" - if that's your idea of agood time.It could even be argued, I think, that Hitch-cock's uniformity, his mastery of tricks, andhis cleverness at getting audiences to respondaccording to his calculations - the feedbackhe wants and gets from them - reveal not somuch a personal style as a personal theory ofaudience psychology, that his methods andapproach are not those of an artist but a presti-digitator. The auteur critics respond just asHitchcock expects the gullible to respond. Thisis not so surprising - often the works auteurcritics call masterpieces are ones that seem toreveal the contempt of the director for theaudience.

It's hard to believe that Sarris seriously at-tempts to apply "the distinguishable personal-ity of the director as a criterion of value" be-cause when this premise becomes troublesome,he just tries to brazen his way out of difficul-ties. For example, now that John Huston's


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16 CIRCLESNDSQUARESwork has gone flat* Sarris casually dismisseshim with: "Huston is virtually a forgotten manwith a few actors' classics behind him,.."If The Maltese Falcon, perhaps the most high-style thriller ever made in America, a filmHuston both wrote and directed, is not a direc-tor's film, what is? And if the distinguishablepersonality of the director is a criterion ofvalue, then how can Sarries dismiss the Hustonwho comes through so unmistakably in TheTreasure of the Sierra Madre, The AfricanQueen, or Beat the Devil, or even in a muddledHuston film like Key Largo? If these are actors'movies, then what on earth is a director'smovie?Isn't the auteur theory a hindrance to clearjudgment of Huston's movies and of his career?Disregarding the theory, we see some fine filmachievements and we perceive a remarkablydistinctive directorial talent; we also see inter-vals of weak, half-hearted assignments likeAcross the Pacific and In This Our Life. Then,after Moulin Rouge, except for the blessing ofBeat the Devil, we see a career that spluttersout in ambitious failures like Moby Dick andconfused projects like The Roots of Heavenand The Misfits, and strictly commercial proj-ects like Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison. And thiskind of career seems more characteristic of filmhistory, especially in the United States, thanthe ripening development and final masteryenvisaged by the auteur theory - a theorythat makes it almost de rigeur to regard Hitch-cock's American films as superior to his earlyEnglish films. Is Huston's career so different,say, from Fritz Lang's? How is it that Huston'searly good - almost great - work, must be

rejected along with his mediocre recent work,but Fritz Lang, being sanctified as an auteur,has his bad recent work praised along with hisgood? Employing more usual norms, if yourespect the Fritz Lang who made M and YouOnly Live Once, if you enjoy the excesses ofstyle and the magnificent absurdities of a filmlike Metropolis, then it is only good sense toreject the ugly stupidity of The Tiger ofEschnapur botch. It is an insult to an artist topraise his bad work along with his good; itindicates that you are incapable of judgingeither.A few years ago, a friend who reviewedJean Renoir's University of California produc-tion of his play Carola, hailed it as "a work ofgenius." When I asked my friend how he couldso describe this very unfortunate play, he said,"Why, of course, it's a work of genius. Renoir'sa genius, so anything he does is a work ofgenius." This could almost be a capsule versionof the auteur theory (just substitute Hatarifor Carola) and in this reductio ad absurdum,viewing a work is superfluous, as the judgmentis a priori. It's like buying clothes by the label:this is Dior, so it's good. (This is not so farfrom the way the auteur critics work, either).Sarris doesn't even play his own game withany decent attention to the rules: it is as ab-surd to praise Lang's recent bad work as todismiss Huston's early good work; surely itwould be more consistent if he also tried tomake a case for Huston's bad pictures? Thatwould be more consistent than devising acategory called "actors' classics" to explainhis good pictures away. If The Maltese Falconand The Treasure of Sierra Madre are actors'classics, then what makes Hawks' To Haveand Have Not and The Big Sleep (which wereobviously tailored to the personalities of Bogartand Bacall) the work of an auteur?

Sarris believes that what makes an auteur is"an d1an of the soul." (This critical languageis barbarous. Where else should 6lan comefrom? It's like saying "a digestion of thestomach." A film critic need not be a theoreti-cian, but it is necessary that he know how touse words. This might, indeed, be a first pre-

*And, by the way, the turning point came, Ithink, not with Moby Dick, as Sarris ndicates, butmuch earlier, with Moulin Rouge. This may notbe so apparentto auteur critics concerned primar-ily with style and individual touches, becausewhat was shocking about Moulin Rouge was thatthe content was sentimentalmush. But critics whoaccept even the worst of Minnelli probablywouldn't have been bothered by the fact thatMoulin Rouge was soft in the center, it had somany fancy touches at the edges.


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CIRCLESND SQUARES 17mise for a theory.) Those who have this dlanpresumably have it forever and their films re-veal the "organic unity" of the directors'careers; and those who don't have it - well,they can only make "actors' classics." It'sironic that a critic trying to establish simple"objective" rules as a guide for critics who hethinks aren't gifted enough to use taste and in-telligence, ends up - where, actually, he began- with a theory based on mystical insight.This might really make demands on the auteurcritics if they did not simply take the easy wayout by arbitrary decisions of who's got "it" andwho hasn't. Their decisions are not merely notbased on their theory; their decisions arebeyond criticism. It's like a woman's telling usthat she feels a certain dress does somethingfor her: her feeling has about as much to dowith critical judgment as the auteur criticsfeeling that Minnelli has "it," but Hustonnever had "it."Even if a girl had plenty of "it," she wasn'texpected to keep it forever. But this "dlan" isnot supposed to be affected by the vicissitudesof fortune, the industrial conditions of movie-making, the turmoil of a country, or the healthof a director. Indeed, Sarris says, "If directorsand other artists cannot be wrenched from theirhistorical environments, aesthetics is reducedto a subordinate branch of ethnography." MayI suggest that if, in order to judge movies, theauteur critics must wrench the directors fromtheir historical environments (which is, to putit mildly, impossible) so that they can concen-trate on the detection of that "dlan," they arereducing aesthetics to a form of idiocy. Elanas the permanent attribute Sarris posits canonly be explained in terms of a cult of per-sonality. May I suggest that a more meaning-ful description of dlan is what a man feels whenhe is working at the height of his powers -and what we respond to in works of art withthe excited cry of "This time, he's really doneit" or "This shows what he could do when hegot the chance" or "He's found his style" or"I never realized he had it in him to do any-thing so good," etc., a response to his joy increativity.

Sarris experiences "joy" when he recognizesa pathetic little link between two Raoul Walshpictures (he never does explain whether thediscovery makes him think the pictures are anybetter) but he wants to see artists in a pristinestate - their essences, perhaps? - separatedfrom all the life that has formed them and towhich they try to give expression."THENNER IRCLE"

"The third and ultimate premise of theauteur theory is concerned with interiormeaning, the ultimate glory of the cinema asan art. Interiormeaning is extrapolated romthe tension between a director'spersonalityand his material."This is a remarkable formulation: it is the

opposite of what we have always taken forgranted in the arts, that the artist expresseshimself in the unity of form and content. WhatSarris believes to be "the ultimate glory of thecinema as an art" is what has generally beenconsidered the frustrations of a man workingagainst the given material. Fantastic as thisformulation is, it does something that the firsttwo premises didn't do: it clarifies the interestsof the auteur critics. If we have been puzzledbecause the auteur critics seemed so deeply in-volved, even dedicated, in becoming connois-seurs of trash, now we can see by this theoreti-cal formulation that trash is indeed their chosenprovince of film.Their ideal auteur is the man who signs along-term contract, directs any script that'shanded to him, and expresses himself by shov-ing bits of style up the crevasses of the plots.If his "style" is in conflict with the story lineor subject matter, so much the better - morechance for tension. Now we can see why therehas been so much use of the term "personality"in this aesthetics (the term which seems so in-adequate when discussing the art of Griffith orRenoir or Murnau or Dreyer) - a routine, com-mercial movie can sure use a little "personal-ity."Now that we have reached the inner circle(the bull's eye turns out to be an empty socket)we can see why the shoddiest films are often


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CIRCLESND SQUARES 19these critics honestly (and futilely) looking for"interior meanings" or is this just some form ofintellectual diddling that helps to sustain theirpride while they're viewing silly movies? Whereis the tension in Howard Hawks' films? Whenhe has good material, he's capable of betterthan good direction, as he demonstrates infilms like Twentieth Century, Bringing UpBaby, His Girl Friday; and in To Have andHave Not and The Big Sleep he demonstratesthat with help from the actors, he can jazz upridiculous scripts. But what "interior meaning"can be extrapolated from an enjoyable, harm-less, piece of kitsch like Only Angels HaveWings; what can the auteur critics see in itbeyond the sex and glamor and fantasies ofthe high-school boys' universe - exactly whatthe mass audience liked it for? And whenHawks' material and/or cast is dull and whenhis heart isn't in the production - when by theauteur theory he should show his "personality,"the result is something soggy like The Big Sky.

George Cukor's modest statement, "Give mea good script and I'll be a hundred times betteras a director"* provides some notion of how adirector may experience the problem of thegiven material. What can Cukor do with ascript like The Chapman Report but try to kidit, to dress it up a bit, to show off the talents ofJane Fonda and Claire Bloom and Glynis Johns,and to give the total production a little flairand craftsmanship. At best, he can make anentertaining bad movie. A director with some-thing like magical gifts can make a silk purse

out of a sow's ear. But if he has it in him to domore in life than make silk purses, the triumphis minor - even if the purse is lined with gold.Only by the use of the auteur theory does thislittle victory become "ultimate glory." Forsome unexplained reason those travelling inauteur circles believe that making that purseout of a sow's ear is an infinitely greater accom-plishment than making a solid carrying caseout of a good piece of leather (as, for example,a Zinnemann does with From Here to Eternityor The Nun's Story).

I suppose we should be happy for Sirk andPreminger, elevated up the glory "scale," butI suspect that the "stylistic consistency" of, say,Preminger, could be a matter of his limitations,and that the only way you could tell he madesome of his movies was that he used the sameplayers so often (Linda Darnell, Jeanne Crain,Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, et al., gave hismovies the Preminger look). But the argumentis ludicrous anyway, because if Premingershows stylistic consistency with subject matteras varied as Carmen Jones, Anatomy of aMurder, and Advise and Consent, then by anyrational standards he should be attacked ratherthan elevated. I don't think these films arestylistically consistent, nor do I think Premingeris a great director - for the very simple reasonthat his films are consistently superficial andfacile. (Advise and Consent-an auteur "master-piece" - Ian Cameron, Paul Mayersberg, andMark Shivas of Movie and Jean Douchet ofCahiers du Cindma rate it first on their tenbest lists of 1962 and Sarris gives it his toprating-seems not so much Preminger-directedas other-directed. That is to say, it seems calcu-lated to provide what as many different groupsas possible want to see: there's something forthe liberals, something for the conservatives,something for the homosexuals, something forthe family, etc.) An editorial in Movie states:"In order to enjoy Preminger's films the specta-tor must apply an unprejudiced intelligence; heis constantly required to examine the qualitynot only of the characters' decisions but also ofhis own reactions," and "He presupposes anintelligence active enough to allow the specta-

*In another sense, it is perhaps immodest. Iwould say, give Cukor a clever script with light,witty dialogue, and he will know what to do withit. But I wouldn't expect more than glossy enter-tainment. (It seems almost too obvious to mentionit, but can Sarris really discern the "distinguish-able personality" of George Cukor and his "ab-stract" style in films like Bhowani Junction, LesGirls, The Actress,A Life of Her Own, The Modeland the Marriage Broker, Edward, My Son, AWoman'sFace, Romeo and Juliet, A Double Life?I wish I could put him to the test. I can onlysuspect that many auteur critics would have a hardtime seeing those tell-tale traces of the belovedin their works.)


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20 CIRCLESNDSQUAREStor to make connections, comparisons and judg-ments." May I suggest that this spectator wouldhave better things to do than the editors ofMovie who put out Preminger issues? Theymay have, of course, the joys of discoveringlinks between Centennial Summer, ForeverAmber, That Lady in Ermine, and TheThirteenth Letter, but I refuse to believe inthese ever-so-intellectual protestations. Theauteur critics aren't a very convincing group.I assume that Sarris' theory is not based onhis premises (the necessary causal relationshipsare absent), but rather that the premises weredevised in a clumsy attempt to prop up the"theory." (It's a good thing he stopped atthree: a few more circles and we'd really bein hell, which might turn out to be the lastrefinement of film tastes - Abbott and Costellocomedies, perhaps?) These critics work em-

Long Live the -er-King"Two Weeks in Another Town is without adoubt Minnelli's best film to date and per-haps the best thing he'll ever do, for neveragain will the coincidence arise of havinga piece of 'respectable trash' like Shaw'snovel, and a director who respects trash.The thing that makes Two Weeks great isnot the acting (Douglas as per usual is hor-rendous;Robinsonstupid, and ClaireTrevor,faintly interesting). Certainly not the story,for the changes from the novel only make itmore banal. It is the fact that Minnelli hastaken somethingnot fit for even the slightestbit of serious critical attention, and turnedit into a film which demands exhaustivevisual analysis on one level and offers acinematic joy-ride on a more visceral level.... Most of all it is a movie which does nottake itself seriously. . . full of beautiful shotsand startlinglypoetic moments, all of whichwould mean nothing unless placed in thecontext of Minnelli's background-a back-ground that indicates, especially with TwoWeeks, that Minnelli is fast challengingDouglas Sirk'stitle as Hollywood's 'King ofCamp.'" -New YorkFilm Bulletin, #45

barrassingly hard trying to give some semblanceof intellectual respectability to a preoccupationwith mindless, repetitious commercial products- the kind of action movies that the restless,rootless men who wander on 42nd Street andin the Tenderloin of all our big cities havealways preferred just because they could re-spond to them without thought. These moviessoak up your time. I would suggest that theydon't serve a very different function for Sarrisor Bogdanovich or the young men of Movie -even though they devise elaborate theories tojustify soaking up their time. An educated manmust have to work pretty hard to set his in-tellectual horizons at the level of I Was a MaleWar Bride (which, incidentally, wasn't even agood commercial movie)."Interior meaning" seems to be what thosein the know know. It's a mystique - and amistake. The auteur critics never tell us bywhat divining rods they have discovered thedlan of a Minnelli or a Nicholas Ray or a LeoMcCarey. They're not critics; they're insidedopesters. There must be another circle thatSarris forgot to get to - the one where thesecrets are kept.OUTSIDEHECIRCLES,rWHATSA FILM RITIC?

I suspect that there's some primitive formof Platonism in the underbrush of Sarris'aesthetics.* He says, for example, that "Bazin'sgreatness as a critic. . . rested in his disinter-ested conception of the cinema as a universalentity." I don't know what a "universal entity"is, but I rather imagine Bazin's stature as acritic has less to do with "universals" than withintelligence, knowledge, experience, sensitivity,perceptions, fervor, imagination, dedication,lucidity, etc. - the traditional qualities asso-*This might help to explain such rather quaintstatements as: Bazin "was, if anything, generousto a fault, seeking in every film some vestige ofthe cinematic art"-as if cinema were not simplythe movies that have been made and are beingmade, but some preexistententity. If Bazin thoughtin these terms, does Sarris go along with him?


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CIRCLESNDSQUARES S21ciated with great critics. The role of the criticis to help people see what is in the work, whatis in it that shouldn't be, what is not in it thatcould be. He is a good critic if he helps peopleunderstand more about the work than theycould see for themselves; he is a great critic, ifby his understanding and feeling for the work,by his passion, he can excite people so thatthey want to experience more of the art thatis there, waiting to be seized. He is not neces-sarily a bad critic if he makes errors in judg-ment. (Infallible taste is inconceivable; whatcould it be measured against?) He is a badcritic if he does not awaken the curiosity, en-large the interests and understanding of hisaudience. The art of the critic is to transmithis knowledge of and enthusiasm for art toothers.I do not understand what goes on in themind of a critic who thinks a theory is whathis confrbres need because they are not "great"critics. Any honest man can perform the criti-cal function to the limits of his tastes andpowers. I daresay that Bogdanovich and V. F.Perkins and Rudi Franchi and Mark Shivasand all the rest of the new breed of specialistsknow more about movies than some people andcould serve at least a modest critical functionif they could remember that art is an expressionof human experience. If they are men of feel-ing and intelligence, isn't it time for them tobe a little ashamed of their "detailed criticism"of movies like River of No Return?I believe that we respond most and best towork in any art form (and to other experienceas well) if we are pluralistic, flexible, relativein our judgments, if we are eclectic. But thisdoes not mean a scrambling and confusion ofsystems. Eclecticism is not the same as lackof scruple; eclecticism is the selection of thebest standards and principles from varioussystems of ideas. It requires more care, moreorderliness to be a pluralist than to apply asingle theory. Sarris, who thinks he is applyinga single theory, is too undisciplined to recog-nize the conflicting implications of his argu-ments. If he means to take a Platonic position,then is it not necessary for him to tell us what

his ideals of movies are and how various ex-amples of film live up to or fail to meet hisideals? And if there is an ideal to be achieved,an objective standard, then what does 6lanhave to do with it? (The ideal could beachieved by plodding hard work or by inspira-tion or any other way; the method of achievingthe ideal would be as irrelevant as the "per-sonality" of the creator.) As Sarris uses them,vitalism and Platonism and pragmatism do notsupport his auteur theory; they undermine it.Those, like Sarris, who ask for objectivestandards seem to want a theory of criticismwhich makes the critic unnecessary. And he isexpendable if categories replace experience; acritic with a single theory is like a gardenerwho uses a lawn mower on everything thatgrows. Their desire for a theory that will solveall the riddles of creativity is in itself perhapsan indication of their narrowness and con-fusion; they're like those puzzled, lost peoplewho inevitably approach one after a lectureand ask, "But what is your basis for judging amovie?" When one answers that new films arejudged in terms of how they extend our ex-perience and give us pleasure, and that ourways of judging how they do this are drawnnot only from older films but from other worksof art, and theories of art, that new films aregenerally related to what is going on in theother arts, that as wide a background as pos-sible in literature, painting, music, philosophy,political thought, etc., helps, that it is the wealthand variety of what he has to bring to newworks that makes the critic's reaction to themvaluable, the questioners are always unsatisfied.They wanted a simple answer, a formula; ifthey approached a chef they would probablyask for the one magic recipe that could be fol-lowed in all cooking.And it is very difficult to explain to suchpeople that criticism is exciting just becausethere is no formula to apply, just because youmust use everything you are and everythingyou know that is relevant, and that film criti-cism is particularly exciting just because of themultiplicity of elements in film art.This range of experience, and dependence


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22 CIRCLESNDSQUARESon experience, is pitifully absent from thework of the auteur critics; they seem to viewmovies, not merely in isolation from the otherarts, but in isolation even from their own ex-perience. Those who become film specialistsearly in life are often fixated on the period offilm during which they first began going tomovies, so it's not too surprising that the Moviegroup - just out of college and some still in- are so devoted to the films of the 'fortiesand 'fifties. But if they don't widen their inter-ests to include earlier work, how can theyevaluate films in anything like their historicalcontinuity, how can they perceive what is dis-tinctive in films of the 'forties? And if theydon't have interests outside films, how can theyevaluate what goes on in films? Film aestheticsas a distinct, specialized field is a bad joke:the Movie group is like an intellectual club forthe intellectually handicapped. And when isSarris going to discover that aesthetics is indeeda branch of ethnography; what does he thinkit is - a sphere of its own, separate from thestudy of man in his environment?SOMEPECULATIONSNTHEAPPEALFTHEAUTEURHEORYIf relatively sound, reasonably reliable judg-ments were all that we wanted from film criti-cism, then Sight and Sound might be con-sidered a great magazine. It isn't, it's some-thing far less - a good, dull, informative, well-written, safe magazine, the best film magazinein English, but it doesn't satisfy desires for anexcitement of the senses. Its critics don't oftenoutrage us, neither do they open much up forus; its intellectual range is too narrow,' itsapproach too professional. (If we recall anarticle or review, it's almost impossible toremember which Peter or which Derek wroteit.) Standards of quality are not enough, andSight and Sound tends to dampen enthusiasm.Movie, by contrast, seems spirited: one feelsthat these writers do, at least, love movies,that they're not condescending. But they too,perhaps even more so, are indistinguishableread-alikes, united by fanaticism in a ludicrouscause; and for a group that discounts content

and story, that believes the director is theauteur of what gives the film value, they showan inexplicable fondness - almost an obsession- for detailing plot and quoting dialogue. Withall the zeal of youth serving an ideal, theycarefully reduce movies to trivia.It is not merely that the auteur theory dis-torts experience (all theory does that, and helpsus to see more sharply for having done so) butthat it is an aesthetics which is fundamentallyanti-art. And this, I think, is the most seriouscharge that can possibly be brought against anaesthetics. The auteur theory, which probablyhelped to liberate the energies of the Frenchcritics, plays a very different role in Englandand with the Film Culture and New York FilmBulletin auteur critics in the United States -an anti-intellectual, anti-art role.The French auteur critics, rejecting thesocially conscious, problem pictures so dear tothe older generation of American critics, be-came connoisseurs of values in American pic-tures that Americans took for granted, and ifthey were educated Americans, often held incontempt. The French adored the Americangangsters, and the vitality, the strength, ofour action pictures - all those films in whicha couple of tough men slug it out for a girl,after going through hell together in oil fields,or building a railroad, or blazing a trail. Inone sense, the French were perfectly right -these were often much more skilfully made andfar more interesting visually than the movieswith a message which Americans were so proudof, considered so adult. Vulgar melodrama witha fast pace can be much more exciting - andmore honest, too-than feeble, pretentious at-tempts at drama- which usually meant justputting "ideas" into melodrama, anyway.Where the French went off was in findingelaborate intellectual and psychological mean-ings in these simple action films. (No doubt wemake some comparable mistakes in interpretingFrench films.)

Like most swings of the critical pendulum,the theory was a corrective, and it helped toremind us of the energies and crude strengthand good humor that Europeans enjoyed in


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CIRCLESNDSQUARES 23our movies. The French saw something in ourmovies that their own movies lacked; they ad-mired it, and to some degree, they have takenit over and used it in their own way (trium-phantly in Breathless and Shoot the PianoPlayer, not very successfully in their semi-American thrillers). Our movies were a prod-uct of American industry, and in a sense, itwas America itself that they loved in ourmovies - our last frontiers, our robber-barons,our naivet6, our violence, our efficiency andspeed and technology, our bizarre combina-tion of sentimentality and inhuman mechaniza-tion.But for us, the situation is different. It isgood for us to be reminded that our mass cul-ture is not altogether poisonous in its effecton other countries, but what is appealinglyexotic - "American" - for them is often in-tolerable for us. The freeways of cities likeLos Angeles may seem mad and marvelous toa foreign visitor; to us they are the nightmareswe spend our days in. The industrial productsof Hollywood that we grew up on are notenough to satisfy our interests as adults. Wewant a great deal more from our movies thanwe get from the gangster carnage and theJohn Ford westerns that Europeans adore. Ienjoy some movies by George Cukor andHoward Hawks but I wouldn't be much inter-ested in the medium if that were all that moviescould be. We see many elements in foreignfilms that our movies lack. We also see thatour films have lost the beauty and innocenceand individuality of the silent period, and thesparkle and wit of the 'thirties. There was nospecial reason for the French critics, preoccu-pied with their needs, to become sensitive toours. And it was not surprising that, in France,where film directors work in circumstancesmore comparable to those of a dramatist or acomposer, critics would become fixated onAmerican directors - not understanding howconfused and inextricable are the roles of thefront office, the producers, writers, editors, andall the rest of them - even the marketing re-search consultants who may pretest the draw-ing powers of the story and stars - in Holly-

wood. For the French, the name of a directorwas a guide on what American films to see:if a director was associated with a certain typeof film that they liked; or if a director's workshowed the speed and efficiency that they en-joyed. I assume that anyone interested inmovies uses the director's name as some sortof guide, both positive and negative, eventhough we recognize that at times he is littlemore than a stage manager. For example, inthe 'forties, my friends and I would keep aneye out for the Robert Siodmak films and avoidIrving Rapper films (except when they starredBette Davis whom we wanted to see even inbad movies); I avoid Mervyn LeRoy films(though I went to see Home Before Dark forJean Simmons' performance); I wish I couldavoid Peter Glenville's pictures but he usesactors I want to see. It's obvious that a directorlike Don Siegel or Phil Karlson does a betterjob with what he's got to work with than PeterGlenville, but that doesn't mean there's anypressing need to go see every tawdry littlegangster picture Siegel or Karlson directs; andperhaps if they tackled more difficult subjectsthey wouldn't do a better job than Glenville.There is no rule or theory involved in any ofthis, just simple discrimination; we judge theman from his films and learn to predict a littleabout his next films, we don't judge the filmsfrom the man.

But what has happened to the judgment ofthe English and New York critics who havetaken over the auteur theory and used it toerect a film aesthetics based on those commer-cial movies that answered a need for theFrench, but which are not merely ludicrouslyinadequate to our needs, but are the results ofa system of production that places a hammer-lock on American directors? And how can they,with straight faces, probe for deep meanings inthese products? Even the kids they're made forknow enough not to take them seriously. Howcan these critics, sensible enough to deflate ouroverblown message movies, reject the totalcontent of a work as unimportant and concen-trate on signs of a director's "personality" and"interior meaning"? It's understandable that


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24 CIRCLESNDSQUARESthey're trying to find movie art in the loopholesof commercial production - it's a harmlesshobby and we all play it now and then; what'sincomprehensible is that they prefer their loop-holes to unified film expression. If they weren'tso determined to exalt products over worksthat attempt to express human experience,wouldn't they have figured out that the mise-en-scone which they seek out in these products,the director's personal style which comesthrough despite the material, is only a meresuggestion, a hint of what an artist can do whenhe's in control of the material, when the wholefilm becomes expressive? Isn't it obvious thatmise-en-schne and subject material - form andcontent - can be judged separately only in badmovies or trivial ones? It must be black comedyfor directors to read this new criticism and dis-cover that films in which they felt trapped anddisgusted are now said to be their masterpieces.It's an aesthetics for 1984: failure is success.I am too far from the English scene to guessat motives, and far away also from New York,but perhaps close enough to guess that theAmericans (consciously or unconsciously) aremaking a kind of social comment: like thepop artists, the New Realists with their comicstrips and Campbell's Soup can paintings, theyare saying, "See what America is, this junk isthe fact of our lives. Art and avant-gardism arephony; what isn't any good, is good. Onlysquares believe in art. The artifacts of industrialcivilization are the supreme truth, the supremejoke." This is a period when men who considerthemselves creative scoff at art and tradition.It is perhaps no accident that in the same issueof Film Culture with Sarris' auteur theory thereis a lavishly illustrated spread on "The PerfectFilmic Appositeness of Maria Montez" - afairly close movie equivalent for that outsizedcan of Campbell's Soup. The editor, JonasMekas, has his kind of social comment. Thisis his approach to editing a film magazine:"As long as the 'lucidly minded' critics willstay out, with all their 'form,' 'content,' 'art,''structure,' 'clarity,' 'importance' - everythingwill be all right, just keep them out. For thenew soul is still a bud, still going through its

most dangerous, most sensitive stage." Doesn'texactly make one feel welcome, does it? I'msure I don't know what the problem is: arethere so many "lucidly minded" critics in thiscountry (like Andrew Sarris?) that they mustbe fought off? And aren't these little "buds"that have to be protected from critical judg-ments the same little film-makers who are soconvinced of their importance that they canscarely conceive of a five-minute film whichdoesn't end with what they, no doubt, regardas the ultimate social comment: the mushroomcloud rising. Those "buds" often behave morelike tough nuts.Sarris with his love of commercial trash andMekas who writes of the "cul-de-sac of Westernculture" which is "stifling the spiritual life ofman" seem to have irreconcilable points ofview. Sarris with his joys in Raoul Walsh seemsa long way from Mekas, the spokesman for the"independent filmakers" (who couldn't wormtheir way into Sarris' outer circle). Mekasmakes statements like "The new artist, bydirecting his ear inward, is beginning to catchbits of man's true vision." (Dear Lon ChaneyMekas, please get your ear out of your eye.Mekas has at least one thing in common withgood directors: he likes to dramatize.) But tolove trash and to feel that you are stifled by itare perhaps very close positions. Does the manwho paints the can of Campbell's Soup love itor hate it? I think the answer is both: that heis obsessed by it as a fact of our lives and asymbol of America. When Mekas announces,"I don't want any part of the Big Art Game"he comes even closer to Sarris. And doesn't theauteur theory fit nicely into the pages of an"independent filmakers" journal when youconsider that the work of those film-makersmight compare very unfavorably with goodfilms, but can look fairly interesting when com-pared with commercial products. It can evenlook original to those who don't know muchfilm history. The "independent filmakers,"Lord knows, are already convinced about theirimportance as the creative figures-the auteurs;a theory which suggested the importance ofwriting to film art might seriously damage their


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26 CIRCLESNDSQUARESthe auteur theory would not be worth dis-cussing in the Sixties,"does he mean any morethan that he has taken over the fiats of theauteur critics in the 'fifties and goes on apply-ing them in the 'sixties? Does he seriouslyregard his own Minnelli-worship as some sortof objective verification of the critics whopraised Minnelli in the 'fifties? If that's hisconcept of critical method, he might just aswell join forces with other writers in FilmCulture. In addition to Mekas ("Poets are sur-rounding America, flanking it from all sides,")there is, for example, Ron Rice: "And thebeautiful part about it all is that you can, mydear critics, scream protest to the skies, you'retoo late. The Musicians, Painters, Writers,Poets and Film-Makers all fly in the same sky,and know Exactly where It's 'AT'." Rice knowswhere he's at about as much as Stan Brakhagewho says, "So the money vendors have begunit again. To the catacombs then.. ." In thepages of Film Culture they escape from themoney changers in Jerusalem by going to thecatacombs in Rome. "Forget ideology," Brak-hage tells us, "for film unborn as it is has nolanguage and speaks like an aborigine." We'reall familiar with Brakhage's passion for ob-stetrics, but does being a primitive man meanbeing a foetus? I don't understand that unbornaborigine talk, but I'm prepared to believe thatgrunt by grunt, or squeal by squeal, it will beas meaningful as most of Film Culture. I amalso prepared to believe that for Jonas Mekas,culture is a "Big Lie." And Sarris, looking foranother culture under those seats coated withchewing gum, coming up now and then to an-nounce a "discovery" like Joanne Dru, has hefound his spiritual home down there?Isn't the anti-art attitude of the auteur criticsboth in England and here, implicit also in theirpeculiar emphasis on virility? (Walsh is, forSarris,"one of the screen's most virile directors."In Movie we discover: "When one talks aboutthe heroes of Red River, or Rio Bravo, orHatari one is talking about Hawks himself... Finally everything that can be said in pre-senting Hawks boils down to one simple state-

ment: here is a man.") I don't think criticswould use terms like "virile" or "masculine" todescribe artists like Dreyer or Renoir; there issomething too limited about describing themthis way (just as when we describe a woman assensitive and feminine, we are indicating herspecial nature). We might describe Kipling asa virile writer but who would think of callingShakespeare a virile writer? But for the auteurcritics calling a director virile is the highestpraise because, I suggest, it is some kind ofassurance that he is not trying to express him-self in an art form, but treats movie-making asa professional job. (Movie: Hawks "makes thevery best adventure films because he is at onewith his heroes.... Only Raoul Walsh is asdeeply an adventurer as Hawks .... Hawks'heroes are all professionals doing jobs -scientists, sheriffs, cattlemen, big game hunters:real professionals who know their capabilities.... They know exactly what they can do withthe available resources, expecting of othersonly what they know can be given.") Theauteur critics are so enthralled with theirnarcissistic male fantasies (Movie: "BecauseHawks' films and their heroes are so genuinelymature, they don't need to announce the factfor all to hear") that they seem unable torelinquish their schoolboy notions of humanexperience. (If there are any female practi-tioners of auteur criticism, I have not yet dis-covered them.) Can we conclude that, in Eng-land and the United States, the auteur theoryis an attempt by adult males to justify stayinginside the small range of experience of theirboyhood and adolescence - that period whenmasculinity looked so great and important butart was something talked about by poseurs andphonies and sensitive-feminine types? And isit perhaps also their way of making a commenton our civilization by the suggestion that trashis the true film art? I ask; I do not know.

Kael Circles and Squares

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