No blues: Charlotte Rampling in Lumet’s The Verdict, 1982
Q: You’ve talked about the irony of how some critics referred to Prince of the City as “realistic” whereas you deliberately made it in a more expressive style—in terms of the lenses you used, forced perspectives, making certain objects prominent in the frame. It’s almost as if you did your job too well, because the viewer does get caught up in the emotional reality of the story.
A: Prince of the City is a highly stylized movie. And one of the reasons I’m glad it’s not discussed from a stylistic point of view is, to me, it’s bad style if people spot it. However, I’m not letting critics off the hook. You’re a critic because you should be able to spot it. You know, you’re not a critic just for your opinion. My elevator man has got an opinion. Theoretically, you know movies enough technically so that you can recognize what lenses are being used, so that you can recognize a color palette. The color palette in The Verdict is wonderful and so carefully worked out. You know the color blue appears only once in that movie? I couldn’t get the sky out of the shot. And I looked for a way to change the lens, but I needed that lens for another reason. But that kind of control on a movie is what my work is about.
And then I said, “Wow, I didn’t notice that about The Verdict at all,” and then Lumet punched me in the mouth and said “Go! And never darken my towels again!” and then…
But seriously, that’s from my 2007 interview with Lumet, in the Fall edition of the DGA Quarterly for that year. The whole thing is available on line here. I put this up as my contribution to the Great “What Should A Film Critic Know” Debate Of 2014, of which this Criticwire survey response and this impassioned manifesto by Matt Zoller Seitz are major parts.
For some reason I am also reminded of Martin Scorsese’s recollection of Sergio Leone’s reaction to Scorsese’s The King of Comedy: “When it was shown at the first night of the Cannes Festival, I went backstage with Sergio Leone and he looked at me and said, ‘Martin, that’s your most mature film.’ I don’t know if it was his way of saying he didn’t like it. I guess that comes to mind because over the years my friends and I have had a running joke about slow movies, where the camera doesn’t move, as being ‘mature.’ ”
“And then I said, “Wow, I didn’t notice that about The Verdict at all,” and then Lumet punched me in the mouth and said “Go! And never darken my towels again!” and then…”
Typical Lumet.
But contra Lumet, hasn’t Slate conclusively and empirically proved that film and teevee critics are supposed to exclusively focus on plot summaries?
I’ve read both your survey response and Seitz’s post and I think I come down the middle on this question. I do have a beef with the writing of critics like Richard Roeper, who seems to be an op-ed writer who got dropped into the film beat, and Stephanie Zacharek, who actively rejects discussion of form as getting in the way with how a movie makes you “feel”. But I also wonder if Seitz really thinks a good critic has to discuss “form” in every review. I think there are definitely films and filmmakers who are worth talking about in terms of the specific choices they made in their movies, but do we need to do that with that Zac Efron rom com that came out a couple of months ago? Or Joss Whedon’s next movie (I like his movies just fine, but I don’t think there are many people out there who’d argue that he’s an especially inventive director visually).
There are plenty of critics I like, you included Glenn, who very eloquently discuss filmmaking specifics in their writing, but I also feel like I’ve read some really great reviews that don’t too.
To paraphrase Matt Groening: you’re a great critic when you can use “mise-en-scène” in your review and people still read it to the end.
Jose: Surely a discussion of form would include pointing out when a director isn’t especially inventive. Such direction may not provide much to chew on, but it shouldn’t go unmentioned.
Also, I find that the visual strategies of many comedies are overlooked or underrated simply because they aren’t self-consciously “visual.” Often comedy direction serves performance, choosing the perfect framing and editing strategy to enhance the comedy without distracting from the dialogue or physical shtick. This can require as much or more discipline and skill as the most gorgeous “magic hour” shot or complex long take with a lot of movement.
“What every film critic must know” – an article by the infamously miserablist Ronald Bergan (but I try not to hold that against him):
http://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2007/mar/26/whateveryfilmcriticmustkn
This is fascinating, and helps explain the emotional pull that Prince of the City had when I first watched it–a Dostoevskyean unraveling of one man’s guilt. For Lumet, the most efficient director since Ford, it’s also a movie that needs to be three hours long. The guilt needs to unravel slowly. In my memory, I imagine the final hour or so as all close-ups of Treat Williams’ stricken face.