It's Only a Movie! by Richard Haberski Jr., Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky. 2001. Review by Harvey Karten, film_critic@compuserve.com
As a film critic for several online sites, I share with others of my vocation a distress that while the public may be reading us, the reviews themselves seem to be influencing only a few in their choices of films. I like to say defensively that it is not the critic's function to operate as a Consumer Reports guide, to send people to the theaters or to guide them into settling back into their couches. But the writing is on the wall; or, rather, the writing should be there but it isn't: critics have lost much of the authority they once had to influence the public. In a short book filled with lush prose, Richard J. Haberski Jr. strives to tell us why critical authority has declined albeit less rapidly than the current NASDAQ chart, topping his tome off with a mixed conclusion. On the one hand movies are such a joyful medium, the film world may not really suffer for the breakdown in authority. On the other hand, "It is sad that today movie critics appear powerless ot help us discover the art of moviegoing."
Tracing a brief film history encompassing the impact of select organizations like the National Board of Review on the movie choices available to us, Haberski's book is most enlightening and relevant (at least to critics like me) when it referees debates among several major writers such as Pauline Kael, Andrew Sarris, Stanley Kauffmann and Dwight MacDonald--writers who have had often divergent viewpoints on such issues as the importance of the director, the gap between the younger and older audience, the relative values of elitism and democracy, and most of all the big question of whether movies should even be considered an art that justifies critical analysis.
Theory aside, the general public felt comfortable with the idea of art until the dawn of the Pop era signalled by the ideas and paintings of Andy Warhol. The book reaches a high point in its examination of the Big Debate between the Andrew ("auteur theory) Sarris--who believes that the director is the all-important creator of a film, and the late Pauline ("It's Only a Movie!") Kael - -who was known for toughness toward sugarcoated movies like "The Sound of Music" and praised almost universally condemned fare like "Bonnie and Clyde." Despite her staunch advocacy of strong films, Kael amassed a large readership with her disdain for pretension and love for good films whether or not they had "something to say."
"It's Only a Movie!" is a must-read for critics and would make a sure-fire addition to the library of movie buffs everywhere.
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