Egypt's unemployment rate falls in Q2 '25 – CAPMAS    EGP swings vs. USD in early Sunday trade    EGX launches 1st phone app    Egypt achieves record primary budget surplus of EGP 629bn despite sharp fall in Suez Canal revenues    Escalation in Gaza, West Bank as Israeli strikes continue amid mounting international criticism    Egypt recovers collection of ancient artefacts from Netherlands    Resumption of production at El Nasr marks strategic step towards localising automotive industry: El-Shimy    Egypt harvests 315,000 cubic metres of rainwater in Sinai as part of flash flood protection measures    Egypt, UNDP discuss outcomes of joint projects, future environmental cooperation    United Bank achieves EGP 1.51bn net profit in H1 2025, up 26.9% year-on-year    After Putin summit, Trump says peace deal is best way to end Ukraine war    Egypt, Namibia explore closer pharmaceutical cooperation    Jordan condemns Israeli PM remarks on 'Greater Israel'    Renowned Egyptian novelist Sonallah Ibrahim dies at 88    Egypt's FM discusses Gaza, bilateral ties in calls with Saudi, South African counterparts    Egypt prepares to tackle seasonal air pollution in Nile Delta    Al-Sisi says any party thinking Egypt will neglect water rights is 'completely mistaken'    Egyptian, Ugandan Presidents open business forum to boost trade    Egypt's Sisi, Uganda's Museveni discuss boosting ties    Egypt's Sisi warns against unilateral Nile measures, reaffirms Egypt's water security stance    Egypt, Colombia discuss medical support for Palestinians injured in Gaza    Egypt, Huawei explore healthcare digital transformation cooperation    Egypt's Sisi, Sudan's Idris discuss strategic ties, stability    Egypt's govt. issues licensing controls for used cooking oil activities    Egypt to inaugurate Grand Egyptian Museum on 1 November    Egypt's Sisi: Egypt is gateway for aid to Gaza, not displacement    Greco-Roman rock-cut tombs unearthed in Egypt's Aswan    Egypt reveals heritage e-training portal    Sisi launches new support initiative for families of war, terrorism victims    Egypt expands e-ticketing to 110 heritage sites, adds self-service kiosks at Saqqara    Palm Hills Squash Open debuts with 48 international stars, $250,000 prize pool    On Sport to broadcast Pan Arab Golf Championship for Juniors and Ladies in Egypt    Golf Festival in Cairo to mark Arab Golf Federation's 50th anniversary    Germany among EU's priciest labour markets – official data    Paris Olympic gold '24 medals hit record value    A minute of silence for Egyptian sports    Russia says it's in sync with US, China, Pakistan on Taliban    It's a bit frustrating to draw at home: Real Madrid keeper after Villarreal game    Shoukry reviews with Guterres Egypt's efforts to achieve SDGs, promote human rights    Sudan says countries must cooperate on vaccines    Johnson & Johnson: Second shot boosts antibodies and protection against COVID-19    Egypt to tax bloggers, YouTubers    Egypt's FM asserts importance of stability in Libya, holding elections as scheduled    We mustn't lose touch: Muller after Bayern win in Bundesliga    Egypt records 36 new deaths from Covid-19, highest since mid June    Egypt sells $3 bln US-dollar dominated eurobonds    Gamal Hanafy's ceramic exhibition at Gezira Arts Centre is a must go    Italian Institute Director Davide Scalmani presents activities of the Cairo Institute for ITALIANA.IT platform    







Thank you for reporting!
This image will be automatically disabled when it gets reported by several people.



THE REEL ESTATE: Critics vs. blockbusters, a lost battle
Published in Daily News Egypt on 05 - 07 - 2007

Amid the hype surrounding the record-breaking yield of the "Pirates of the Caribbean sequel last year, American critics, who gave the film negative reviews, were deemed to be out of touch with the rest of the movie-going public yet again.
The majority of 2006's serious, artistic crop was given the cold shoulder by Americans, who fancied bigger and louder flicks in the vein of "X-Men 3 and "The Da Vinci Code. The increasing number of films withheld from screening to the critics also reached an all-time high.
The situation was different in Egypt, which witnessed a line of smash-hits that were highly praised by the critics. There was one major difference: Nearly every film released over the past few years was seen as a potential blockbuster.
The extent of critics' influence was tested with this year's best reviewed picture, "Fi Sha'et Masr El Gedida (In the Heliopolis Flat), whose triumph at the box office can be partly attributed to positive reviews.
While there is currently no scale to measure critics' impact on the success of movies, that was not always the case.
Film criticism emerged as early as film. The French, Germans, and Italians enjoyed a flourishing critical scene that reflected a balance between commercialism and art. American criticism, on the other hand, was striving to establish an identity for itself as film was widely considered to be nothing more than an industry.
Early American critics came from different fields (Vachel Lindsay and Carl Sandburg were poets, H. L. Mencken was a reporter, Robert E. Sherwood was a Broadway playwright) and the majority did not fully grasp the merits of this new form of entertainment, choosing instead to blindly shower their praise on foreign art-house pictures.
The first genuine signs of a uniform, organized criticism movement appeared in 1934 with the writings of The New Republic's Otis Ferguson who, throughout his short-lived career, highlighted the substantial value of even the trashiest of films. Ferguson was the first to establish film criticism as a distinctive form of writing that takes more than vocabulary and basic sentence structures to master.
Several international filmmakers started-off as critics in the 1940s including renowned Italian directors Fredrico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni along with a number of Polish and Scandinavian directors.
No other critical movement was more influential than the French Nouvelle Vague that burst by the end of the 1950s via the world's greatest film journal Cahiers du cinema. The critiques of iconic filmmakers Godard, Truffaut, Rohmer, and Chabrol were tremendously powerful, quickly becoming the barometer for the success or failure of any film released in Europe.
The 1950s also witnessed the professional birth of Pauline Kael, now regarded as possibly the greatest film critic in American history.
Kael's writing style was infused by her own subjective emotions, composed in strongly colloquial English. By the mid-sixties, Kael's popularity granted her a great deal of authority to prevent filmmakers from working or to advance the career of those she admired. Single-handedly, she was able to create a sensation of Antonioni in the early 1960s while prohibiting director David Lean ("Lawrence of Arabia ) from making films for 14 years.
Almost all revered critics that penetrated the scene afterwards - Armond White, A.O. Scott and the Pulitzer Prize winner Roger Ebert - considered themselves her protégés. By the mid-eighties, the dwindling state of movies reduced the influence of critics simply because most people stopped reading.
This also explains the diminishing role of critics in Egypt. The country's most celebrated critics - Ahmed El-Hadari, Mary Ghadban, Ahmed Ra'fat Bahgat and Samir Farid - were preoccupied with European and classical American films. They saw the majority of Egyptian movies as replicas of foreign films with embedded western content. Egyptian intellectuals steered away from cinema, and so did these critics, especially with the end of Egypt's neo-realism movement at the start of the 1990s.
The new breed of critics lacks the intelligence, knowledge and integrity of the old guard. Their cinematic expertise is confined to classical Egyptian flicks and some American ones. Their criticism feels hollow, lacking context or character.
Distended blockbusters will continue to dominate even without a thumbs-up from critics. The real challenge now is to motivate people to discover the hidden gems released every year and build up enough support for these filmmakers to continue producing.
My own passion for writing about films began years ago from Kael's review of Vittorio De Sica's "Shoeshine, arguably the most beautiful film critique ever written. Kael's description of how she left the theatre in tears after watching the film and the alienation she felt from everyone who could not recognize the humanity of the great Italian maverick touched me in a way that transcended other reviews I'd read.
The same happened with Ferguson's review of "Top Hat, Kael's "L'Aventura as well as Ebert's "Cries & Whispers and "The Passion of the Christ.
From their writings, I learned that if you succeed in inducing anyone to share your enthusiasm about filmmakers like Minnelli, Antonioni, Renoir or Chaplin, then maybe, being a critic is worthwhile after all.


Clic here to read the story from its source.