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FILM CULTURE READER EDITED BY P. ADAMS SITNEY Introduction by the editor; Praeger Publishers, New York, 1970; hardcover, $12.50; paperback, $4.95; 438 pages; illustrated; index.
REVIEWED BY BILL SIMON
Bill Simon is a doctoral candidate at NYU.
The first time I read an issue of Film Culture magazine is still vivid in my memory. I was at the time a neophyte film student, with critical attitudes shaped by Time, Newsweek, and The Saturday Review. I especially remember being surprised and a little bewildered by very favorable and serious reviews ol John Ford's the man who shot liberty valance and Howard Hawks' hatari, two films that were considered beneath contempt by the critics I was then reading.
I also remember being puzzled and mildly disturbed by what seemed like some rather obscure material in the same issue- the poetical, polemical writings of Dziga Vertov and several articles about the aims and accomplishments of something called the New American Cinema.
I continued to read Film Culture regularly from that time on and the magazine continued for a long time to surprise me and to call into question my assumptions about film. The critical position that first attracted me to the magazine- the major revaluation of the importance of the commercial American cinema and its directors- grew quickly into what became known as the auteur controversy. Led by Andrew Sarris, the auteur critics soon left the pages of Film Culture and went on in a few short years to a period of fame, notoriety, and critical dominance, even perhaps already to a period of decadence.
The other stream of critical thought that I detected in my first issue of Film Culture- a concern for the experimental, avant-garde film- has had a...