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Opening Shots: ‘Day for Night’

Jim Emerson

A bus crosses the frame from left to right and we follow a woman in red walking from right to left, who stops to get a magazine. Notice the curves and circles that establish a pattern for the shot — the curb, the kiosk, the fountain.

View image The bus re-enters in the background, driving around the circle and now moving in the same direction as the lady in red and the camera — an indication that the shot (and the movie) will loop back upon itself.

From Kathleen Carroll, co-founder and artistic director of the Lake Placid Film Forum (and “non-practicing film critic”):

I still smile at the very thought of Francois Truffaut’s opening shot in “Day for Night,” the amazingly long tracking shot that gradually reveals the film-within-the-film. I interviewed Truffaut at the time that “Day for Night” was first released in this country. This is how he explained his purpose for making the film. “I wanted to show a film to the public about the making of a film, a film that would give the most information and from which one could learn the technical aspects of movie making. The film will help those who are thinking about making films. And, as far as the ordinary public is concerned, the film doesn’t spoil anything.”

View image Still following the woman in red, a pair of figures in black appear in the background, moving forward on the diagonal, on a trajectory that just might intersect with the camera’s. Will the shot turn out to be about them instead of the lady in red? Or are they somehow connected with the lady in red?

View image The pair in black split up. The woman heads down the subway entrance — and so does the lady in red. The man in black continues toward the camera. Are we going to meet up with this guy?

During the same interview Truffaut told a funny story about “Jules and Jim” which, as he explained, he deliberately tried to make “like an MGM film.” There were those who did not see “Jules and Jim” as just another MGM movie. When the film was first released here, the then all-powerful Legion of Decency (which later became known as The National Catholic Office of Motion Pictures) threatened to give it a condemned rating. Truffaut was asked to speak to a group of priests on behalf of the film. He went reluctantly, feeling “like a little juvenile delinquent.”

View image Nope. The man in black falls out of the frame and the lady in red descends into the subway, casting a (fond?) look back as she leaves us. We fix upon another lady, one we saw back at the magazine vendor, walking a dachshund.

“Do you realize the girl in the film is behaving like Elizabeth Taylor?” asked one of the priests. “It was the time of ‘Cleopatra,'” and the Taylor-Burton affair was all over the newspapers,” recalled Truffaut. “I pretended that I didn’t know what he was talking about.” “It’s in the newspapers,” insisted the priest. “I only read film reviews,” said Truffaut.

View image Jean-Pierre Leaud comes out of the subway, and turns in the direction the camera is already moving. OK, we’re abandoning the lady with the dog. This is who we’re going to watch — he’s the star of the movie! (Yes, casting will often tell you how to watch a shot.)

JE: Oh, Kathleen — joy is right! This really may be the Ultimate Opening Shot in many ways, because we actually get to go back into it and critique it in the movie itself. The whole thing looks perfectly random and natural (I don’t want to know how many takes it really took), as if the eye (camera) were just alighting upon one thing and then another as its interest is piqued. But we soon see how carefully and precisely it’s all choreographed. Day for night. Illusion for reality. Artifice in the service of art. Notice, too the use of strong colors like red (dress, car, little girl, etc.) and white (car, overcoat, etc.) — the alternating colors of the awning in the background — and black (suits, car roof, etc.) to focus our attention. Doesn’t this just make you want to go out and make a movie?

(Shot continues after the jump)

“I’m F***ing Matt Damon”: A critical analysis

Jim Emerson

Sarah Silverman stands against an overexposed white background, addressing the camera (and her boyfriend of five years, talk show host Jimmy Kimmel). “Hey Jimmy,” she says, “It’s me.” It’s the quintessential Silverman line delivery: faux-awkward, sweet and self-consciously cute, but so sharp and precisely targeted that it almost hurts a little. Of course it’s her. But where is she?

Well, she’s in some netherworld hotel, neither here nor there — been on the road so long, you know, she’s not even sure what city she’s in, to be honest — and she has something on her mind, something she’s been meaning to tell Jimmy, that she’s been carrying around with her like excess baggage. Dressed in a snug, lipstick-magenta/pink shirt, she stands out, flush and ripe, from the soft pale light that envelops her. She strolls to the right, from one lush, clean-green tropical split-leaf philodendron to another, a sexy and innocent Eve in the unspoiled Garden of Eden (or a hotel lobby facsimile thereof). Her delicate fingers stroke a wistful figure on her guitar, again and again, as she works up the backbone to expose her true feelings. (Insert what we imagine to be a typical candid photo of the happy couple: Silverman draped adoringly over the shoulders of a drunken, blurry-eyed Kimmel.)

View image In the primeval Garden: The moment of first release, the revelation of Knowledge in the Biblical sense.

The segue, if you call it that, is abrupt, jarring. Cut to a close-up of her guitar (“Here it goes…”) and a crunching electric riff begins. Medium shot of Silverman as she sings the first line (and the title), with an expression of “Omygod!” on her face, like a teenage girl at a slumber party confessing a crush on the cutest boy in school: “I’m f***ing Matt Damon!” This is inappropriate. Not only is she singing this to her boyfriend, she’s doing it on his fifth anniversary show on network TV. She has not only swallowed the forbidden fruit, she has swallowed the serpent: Matt Damon!

Cut to… Damon himself, in tight black t-shirt (like snakeskin!), arms stretched cockily over the back of a white couch as if in post-coital repose. He’s been seated just outside the frame, all the time, and he gives the camera a knowing, testosterone-fueled smirk: “She’s f***ing Matt Damon!” He’s got the cat-with-the-canary grin. The knowledge that he’s avenging Kimmel’s repeated, disrespectful scheduling slights is written all over his face. He is no longer the butt of the joke, he gets to deliver the punchline. Repeat. Silverman shoots him a naughty-girl look, then shifts her expression to one of rue and sorrow for: “I’m not imagining it’s you.” Next, in an instant, she grits her teeth and turns into Joan Jett. On cue, Damon launches into a Henry Rollins punk growl and threatens to lunge at the camera, seizing it the way we imagine him grabbing Silverman’s waist before they do the nasty title phrase. It begins in a two-shot, with Silverman cheerily bending down into the frame:

On the bed, on the floor

On a towel by the door

In the tub, in the car

Up against the mini-barOne can’t help but recall Theodor Geisel’s seminal “Green Eggs and Ham,” in which Sam I Am pesters an increasingly exasperated, unnamed character who does not like the titular dish. In this case, however, Damon and Silverman are turning the tables: The song is an expression of rapacious appetite, and the way Damon delivers it — with a mad glint in his eyes and a leer on his lips — is a volatile mixture of lust and vengeful glee. He likes them apples….

Joel Siegel helps Kevin Smith promote ‘Clerks II’

Jim Emerson

Not Very Silent Bob blows his own tooter to make some publicity noise.

Extra! Extra! It’s a match made in movie hell: Joel Siegel vs. Kevin Smith (or vice-versa). It’s ugly, but it’s perfect, because the former is to movie reviewing what the latter is to movie directing. So, when Siegel stormed out of a screening of “Clerks II” (allegedly exclaiming on his way up the aisle: “Time to go! First movie I’ve walked out of in 30 [bleeping] years!”), well, Smith saw an exploitable promotional opportunity and ran with it. Not for nothing is he considered the leading contender for Most Avidly Self-Promoting Director, neck-and-neck with M. Night Shyamalan. Smith posted a positively (or should that be “negatively”?) scabrous attack on Siegel on his blog, and went on a drive-time morning radio show to further express his outrage. Plus, he got in an indirect and gratuitous smack at Shyamalan, whose “Lady in the Water” opens opposite “Clerks II” Friday, writing: “I don’t need Joel Siegel to suck my d–k the way he apparently sucks M. Night’s, gushing over his flick before he’s even seen it…”

(WARNING: If you follow the link to Smith’s blog above, be prepared to scroll down through various merchandising offers before getting to the posting itself; and, of course, you should expect lots of profanity and comments about donkey shows and mustaches and ejaculate — that incorrigible Smith je ne sais quois!)

If Siegel’s own account of his outburst on that radio show is correct, it was unnecessary and unprofessional. He could have just walked out and chosen not to review the picture. If he did write anything about the movie (he couldn’t review it because he’d only seen 40 minutes), he was indeed ethically obligated to tell his readers/viewers that he had walked out in the first hour. But, somehow, I find myself having just a tiny bit more respect for Siegel than I ever had before, simply because I didn’t think he was even capable of caring enough to be offended. I remember leaving a studio screening of some Christopher Lambert turkey in LA about 15 years ago (after the movie was over) and the publicist saying to me: “Yeah, I think we’re gonna have to rely on Joel Siegel for this one” — referring to Siegel’s Peter-Travers-like reputation for pumping out ad blub copy to promote just about anything.

Full disclosure: I once liked a Kevin Smith movie (“Dogma”), and I haven’t seen “Mallrats” or “Jersey Girl.” Others, however (especially “Clerks”), have been painful experiences for me. I feel like an accused Communist writing this, but it is my full confession. Indeed, when an aspiring indie filmmaker (who has since had considerable success) once asked me for some directing advice, I told her to watch Smith’s films to see exactly how not to shoot a movie, especially a comedy. She recently wrote to say she had heeded this advice, and to thank me for it. She is more than welcome. You can learn a lot from watching bad movies, and Smith’s are every bit as hacky as Michael Bay’s. The only difference is that the budgets are generally a bit smaller.

At the Independent Spirit Awards this year, Smith did his aw-shucks self-deprecating act and belittled his own directing skills, but apparently critics are not allowed to do their jobs and scrutinize his work. What puzzles me is that Smith and his fans openly acknowledge they know his movies aren’t particularly well-made, but they don’t care because they think they’re funny. Smith himself writes: “I recognize that brand of whimsy might not be for everybody. Film appreciation is very subjective…” So, why not leave it at that? Smith can’t. Witness, for example, the following stories from Mark Caro, Scott Foundas and David Poland:

The Return of the Movie Answer Man

Jim Emerson

Roger Ebert has published first Answer Man column in a year. Topics include: Ousmane Sembene, Scrooge McDuck, “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls,” Phil Spector, Blood-Sucking Monkeys, Cormac McCarthy, “Marie Antoinette,” and President Bush’s stolen watch. Go ahead. He’s got your answers right here.

Rescued by M. Night! Four pieces of Unbreakable…

Jim Emerson

A bleak January moviegoing week was rescued for me by an eight-year-old film from M. Night Shyamalan: “Unbreakable,” which I just happened to run across on Starz HD On Demand (via Comcast — also available through Netflix On Demand), finds just the right tone for its comic-book tale of a depressed and disillusioned man (Bruce Willis) discovering who he really is. Virtually every composition displays a cool use of space, and some revealing piece of detail, that makes it exciting to watch. The movie draws you in, piques your curiosity, zaps your senses and engages your rapt attention.

(NOTE: I don’t recommend watching the Starz HD version, because it has been chopped down from anamorphic widescreen [2.37:1] to generic 16×9, resulting in cropping and panning-and-scanning of some crucial images, which drains them of some of their compositional voltage. Get/rent the DVD or Blu-ray disc. See examples after jump.)

Zombies: Time of the Season of the Witch

Jim Emerson

Zombies and vampires, zombies and vampires — sure, we’re entering Dias de los Muertos, but the undead are crawling all over popular culture these nights. “Twilight” to “Tru-Blood,” “Zombieland” to “Fox News,” the undead are back with a vengeance. But, of course, they’ve been around for a long, long time. Matt Zoller Seitz takes a bite out of the cinematic zombie corpus with his latest video essay, “Zombies 101.” He begins, (un-)naturally, with George Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead” (1968), flashes back to Jacques Tourneur’s voodoo-themed “I Walked With a Zombie,” and moves forward through the Romero “Living Dead” pictures to 21st century remakes and variations — “Shaun of the Dead” (2004), “28 Days Later…” (2002), “28 Weeks Later…” (2007)…

Matt writes:

It’s a feature!

Jim Emerson

Hey, Scannersers: We’re trying out a new Moveable Type threaded comments feature that should allow you to reply directly to individual comments. Just click the “Reply” to the right of the date and time. Will it work? We’ll see…

VIFF: A film from Heath Ledger and friends (and more)

Jim Emerson

As the quaintly anachronistic title suggests, “The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus” is as whimsical and rickety as any Terry Gilliam contraption — an apparent labor of love, and not just for its star Heath Ledger, who died during production, but for the smoke-and-mirrors tomfoolery that goes into the construction of illusions. Another of Gilliam’s charmingly antiquated, hand-crafted thingamadoodles, this one gets off to a bit of a slow start — trying to set up too many stories… but spinning too many stories, and keeping track of them all, is also a good part of its subject.

Ledger’s untimely death unavoidably became another element, since he hadn’t finished filming his central role at the time of his demise. Gilliam, as you probably know, figured out a way to complete the film with three other actors — Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell — stepping in to complete the part. Once you’re watching the movie, that no longer seems like such a strange or desperate move, but I’m not going to tell you how or why it works. (Remember that Natalie Wood died during the filming of “Brainstorm” and Brandon Lee in a production accident on the set of “The Crow,” but those two pictures were completed, for better or worse. David Lynch’s “Mulholland Dr.” was a failed TV series pilot that wasn’t released theatrically until Lynch said he dreamed an ending for it.) A title card at the end announces it as a presentation of “Heath Ledger and Friends.”

You make the movie, you sell the movie

Jim Emerson

“I just think that the young filmmakers today should take advantage of the opportunities and technology that they have now, that I didn’t have, or the generations before me. ‘Cause now you have no excuse…. If you want to be a filmmaker, there it is.”

— Spike Lee, interview with Digital Camera Magazine

The means of production and promotion are in the hands of filmmakers in ways they have never been in the medium’s history. As Spike Lee, director and tube-sock salesman (anybody remember the campaign for “She’s Gotta Have It”?) has said, there are no excuses anymore. If you want to make a movie and get it seen, the tools are right there at your disposal. You don’t need massive studio resources and hundreds of thousands (or millions) of dollars; all you need is a video camera, a computer, some software and access to the Internet and you’ve got a whole vertically-integrated world at your disposal: production, marketing, exhibition. A few well-targeted e-mails, some YouTube clips, a Facebook or MySpace page — even an old-fashioned web site — and suddenly thousands of people know about you and your film. A service like Withoutabox allows you to enter film festivals all over the world in a jiffy, right from your keyboard — without so much as a trip to the post office until you know if you’ve been accepted or invited.

Over many years of interviewing filmmakers I’ve often asked them how they have the energy to make a film once they’ve managed to raise enough money to go into production. And I’ve wondered how they have enough stamina to work on getting their films seen once they’re finished. Specialized film publicist extraordinaire Reid Rosefelt is amazed by the power of new technologies, but asks: “What Happens to the Filmmakers Who Can’t Market Themselves?” At his blog, Shake Your Windows, he writes:

I admit that I am also ambivalent about marketing, because I am someone who loves movies first and promotes them second. I don’t want a director to tell me what a movie means. I don’t want to be saddled with the director’s insistence that the reason they made the film defines what the movie is. In a lot of ways, the reason that a director thinks he or she made a film is irrelevant. They may not fully understand themselves as human beings, let alone understand their movie. Mysterious things come into play that they don’t understand. That’s the miracle of it, really.

Some filmmakers are very skilled about how to play the game of talking to the media. They have a natural facility for giving great quotes without giving away the store. Some, like Jarmusch, have a strong image that works into the way you perceive their movies, expanding and not contracting your reactions. Some are a hoot, like Almodovar, and draw you in with their high spirits. Some invent their own myth out of whole cloth, like Herzog. Many of the people who last the longest in pop culture are shape-shifters, like Dylan, Madonna and Robert Redford–they are omnipresent, hiding in plain sight, and the more you think you know about them, the less you do.

Dialogue as music

Jim Emerson

Couric and Palin, on piano. This is an ear-opening way to hear spoken words. As notes.

I can think of so many movies in which the images play the orchestra (or band, depending on the kind of music the movie suggests) and the actors are the soloists. Dialog by Billy Wilder, or Preston Sturges, or the Coen Bros. often strikes me as fundamentally musical. But I didn’t hear this one coming.

Opening Shots: ‘Thieves Like Us’

Jim Emerson

From Dennis Cozzalio, Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule, Glendale, CA:

When Jim invited me to participate in this survey, I accepted with enthusiasm and then immediately began to worry. Every example of a great opening shot that was coming to mind (“Touch of Evil,” “The Player,” “Shadow of a Doubt”) had already been pawed over and written about to such a degree that I certainly didn’t think I would have anything more to add to the discussion that hadn’t already been said, and far more eloquently than I would be able to say it. And as I continued to drag my feet, I saw some of the off-the-chart top choices I had come up with (“Dazed and Confused,” “Kiss Me Deadly”) get snapped up and written about, again, quite eloquently, by others. Now, after digging through my DVD and laserdisc collection, I’ve finally come up with what I think are some great ones, and as usual I haven’t the discipline to hold myself to just one.

UPDATED WITH FRAME GRABS (07/14/06) JE: Dennis, the owner and proprietor of Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule, of one of my favorite movie blogs, has contributed several great shots and analyses. I’m going to spread ’em out over the next few weeks or so — and try to get frame grabs for ’em. I hadn’t seen “Thieves Like Us” since I showed it in the ASUW student film series at the University of Washington in about 1980, and it isn’t available on US Region 1 NTSC DVD — but I found a German Region 2 PAL version through an Amazon.com z-shop importer, DaaVeeDee.

“Thieves Like Us ” (Robert Altman, 1974; photographed by Jean Boffety)

Robert Altman has had more than one rich, visually stunning opening shot in his long career. From the Panavision image of helicopters racking into focus to kick off “M*A*S*H,” to Rene Auberjoinois’ mysterious lecturer announcing a series of avian themes and questions while surrounded by bird skeletons and other classroom at the beginning of “Brewster McCloud”; from Elliot Gould’s Philip Marlowe stretched out on a bed, counteracting the proactive image of Raymond Chandler’s private eye to the strains of “Hooray for Hollywood��? [and “The Long Goodbye” — ed] to open “The Long Goodbye,” to the K-Tel-esque record commercial that serves as the opening credits of “Nashville,” to the raising of the flag by bugle call leading into the staged massacre that opens “Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson” (proclaimed on-screen with satiric bombast as “Robert Altman’s Absolutely Unique and Heroic Enterprise of Inimitable Lustre!��?), Altman knows how to kick off a movie.

One of his most beautiful opening shots, however, occurs at the beginning of “Thieves Like Us,” a shot that artfully prepares us for the somber mood, the deliberate, unhurried pace of the film as a whole, and its naturalistic attitude toward the story it intends to tell, that of the doomed relationship between a young escaped convict and the naпve young woman with whom he falls in love.

Shyamalan recounts Disney nightmare

Jim Emerson

M. Nightmare Shyamalan: “Sometimes Night would close his eyes and see little oval black and white head shots of Nina Jacobson and Oren Aviv and Dick Cook floating around in his head, unwanted houseguests that would not leave. The Disney people had gotten deep inside his head, interfering with the good work the voices were supposed to do — and it would be hell to get them out.” Image from a seminal Shyamalan influence: the trailer for William Castle’s “The Tingler.”

Critics may argue about how much talent M. Night Shyamalan has as a filmmaker. But in The Village called Hollywood (and the offices of advertising agencies hired by American Express), he’s still seen as a marketable brand name. That’s why some profess to be shocked, shocked that the endlessly self-promoting Shyamalan has such nasty things to say about Disney, his former studio home, in a new book, “The Man Who Heard Voices: Or, How M. Night Shyamalan Risked His Career on a Fairy Tale.” According to The Guardian:

The all-out critique of Disney has astonished industry insiders in Hollywood, where arguments between directors and studios are commonplace but rarely aired in public. Not so for Shyamalan’s industrial-sized fallout with Disney. Early drafts of the book circulating in Hollywood are leaving many stunned at how strongly the director has turned on his old studio.

Leonard Maltin: Still “Movie Crazy”

Jim Emerson

It’s a newsletter and a web site!

Nobody does a better job of reminding us that movies are always in the present tense, no matter how long ago they were made, than movie historian, critic, and (above all) enthusiast Leonard Maltin, who’s celebrating the fifth anniversary of his own, personal movie-zine, “Leonard Maltin’s Movie Crazy” (“A Newsletter for People Who Love Movies”). That’s right — it’s a newsletter. As in, printed on paper and snail-mailed to you. The “Collector’s Corner” of the most recent issue (which just arrived in my mailbox today), appropriately features some vintage promotional envelopes — one from RKO studios, and one “Direct From Location” in Old Tucson, AZ, for Wesley Ruggles’ “Arizona,” starring Jean Arthur. I love Jean Arthur. Almost as much as Barbara Stanwyck.

Though he also has a web site (and writes a “Journal” — not a blog!), I love that someone of Leonard’s stature still puts out a good, analog-style newsletter. (Could we consider it “artisanal”?) But, of course, it’s also perfectly in character for Leonard, someone whose passion for movies has always been deeply personal as well as professional. (I take pride in getting Leonard on the web in the first place. He used to fax his weekly columns to me at Cinemania Online, which was a bit “klugey,” as we used to say. So, I went to his house and set him up on e-mail in 1996 or so. Leonard was an ebay early-adopter — for his astounding collection of movie memorabilia, of course — and once he discovered e-mail, he took to it like a sprocket to celluloid.)

The new issue features an interview with 92-year-old Leslie Martinson, a television director and former MGM script supervisor who worked for Vincente Minnelli, John Huston, Sam Wood, Rouben Mamoulian and others, and who has plenty of stories to tell — including anecdotes about Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire.

“Long before I had any real awareness of directors and their careers, I knew the name Leslie H. Martinson,” Leonard writes, recalling his days as a budding auteurist. “No one who watched television in the 1950s and ’60s could have avoided seeing that name. It was emblazoned on countless TV shows, ranging from “Topper” and “The Millionaire” to every Warner Bros. show imaginable, when that studio dominated the airwaves…” Martinson directed episodes of such series as “Maverick,” “Hawaiian Eye,” “77 Sunset Strip,” “Mannix,” “Mission: Impossible,” “ChiPs,” and “Dallas” — and some movies, too (“Lad: A Dog,” “PT 109,” the 1966 feature “Batman,” based on the hit TV show).

The cover story, “Grade B — But Choice,” is devoted to an obscure 1934 musical called “Young and Beautiful,” featuring “budding starlets, grade-A character actors, grade-B musical numbers, a pair of vaudevillians, a look behind the scenes of Hollywood, bogus appearances by Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton and a script by Dore Schary” [later famous as a producer of films such as “Crossfire,” “Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House,” “They Live By Night” and “The Red Badge of Courage”].

Maltin describes “one of the most bizarre musical numbers ever staged, in which actors wearing full-face masks of major stars appear on stage together,” along with the WAMPAS girls, beauties selected by the Western Association of Motion Picture Advertisers — an organization that, between 1922 and 1934, chose an annual list of promising “Baby Stars,” which included Clara Bow, Mary Astor, Fay Wray, Joan Crawford, Janet Gaynor, Lupe Valez, Jean Arthur (!), Ginger Rogers and Gloria Stuart.

These stars were not on display in “Young and Beautiful,” however. (Betty Bryson, anyone? Dorothy Drake? Hazel Hayes? Lucile Lund? Neoma Judge?) Imagine this:

At first, youre not sure whether or not to believe your eyes; many of the caricature masks are quite good. Some of the performers adopt the actors’ body language, and appear in costumes from the stars’ most recent roles: John Barrymore as he appeared in “Reunion in Vienna,” Wallace Beery as Pancho Villa from “Viva Villa,” George Arliss as “The Iron Duke,” Joe E. Brown in uniform from “Son of a Sailor,” Eddie Cantor in costume from “Roman Scandals,” along with Clark Gable, Maurice Chevalier, Adolphe Menjou, Jimmy Durante, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. After an introductory sequence, the bogus stars participate in a kind of elaborate parade with the WAMPAS lovelies.If that doesn’t sound tantalizing, I don’t know what will.

Believe it or not, “Young and Beautiful” is still available on VHS from Turner Classic Movies.

Thanks, Leonard! Here’s to five — or 55 — more years of film fanaticism. You’re right: “We movie nuts have to stick together…”

Can a movie ruin a good review?

Jim Emerson

Here’s a question for you: Can a movie ruin a good review? Conversely, can a review actually improve upon a movie? Sure, good criticism (whether positive or negative) should encourage you to see a film in new ways you may not have recognized before. Just as cinema itself is a way of looking at the world through someone else’s eyes, criticism is a way of looking at movies through someone else’s eyes. Yet, the movies themselves don’t change — only our perceptions of them (we’ll put aside William Friedkin’s “French Connection” Blu-ray for the moment). On the one hand, a piece of film criticism is kind of like an adaptation. It offers an interpretation of the original, but does not replace it. Other “versions” still exist, just as they always did.

I can think of several examples of criticism that I think is superior to the work being criticized, in the sense that the critic is writing about an idealized version of what’s on the screen — the movie we might wish was on the screen, rather than (or in addition to) the one that’s actually there. A clarification: This has nothing to do with whether the critic is divining the filmmaker’s intentions or not. It has everything to do with what the critic is seeing in, and getting out of, the film.