For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism

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Movie Details

• Genre: Documentary
• Release Date: 0000-00-00
• Running Time: 70 min.
• Director: Gerald Peary
• Cast: Patricia Clarkson, Roger Ebert, Owen Gleiberman, Stanley Kauffmann, Harry Knowles, Elvis Mitchell, Wesley Morris, Rex Reed, Andrew Sarris, Lisa Schwarzbaum
• Producer:
• Writer: Gerald Peary
• Distributor:
• Official Site: For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism Official Site

Gerald Peary's loving tribute to American film criticism comes from the inside; as a critic himself for 30 years, he understands the profession and its players well. He knows that his fellow practitioners work the trade for love, not money. Most of the first 45 minutes are devoted to the history of American film as seen by its reviewers, from the silent era through to the Pauline Kael-Andrew Sarris wars of the 1960s. Their struggle for supremacy -- the avuncular Sarris gets the last word -- inaugurated criticism's glory days, when the profession was actually sexy. (The film's many well-chosen clips somehow don't include Woody Allen as a critic who can afford an enormous San Francisco apartment in 1972’s Play It Again, Sam. Ha!) Peary is properly dismayed by the contemporary decimation of his tribe, missing a chance to interview some downsized scribes at length about the economics of their discomfort. He does a good job tackling today's world of bloggers and other Internet critics, including the "blurb whores" whose work we see only in ads, never in print. This rapidly paced, breezily entertaining look at a mutating field evokes nostalgia for a time when movies really seemed to matter while somehow avoiding despair about its future. One thing, however, becomes painfully apparent: With a couple of exceptions, film critics are far from photogenic, and most of them should never ever appear in movies themselves – a proscription that goes double for its Internet stars.