The appearance of the new Andrew Sarris book from Columbia University Press, Politics and Cinema, and the variety of reviews it has received points out a pertinent problem in reviewing of any kind: who is right? I have no solution for the problem, but I believe that in any critical conflict, there is a correct view, as opposed to a “That’s the way I see it” attitude. Three reviews in particular illustrate the nature of this diversity: John Simon in New York, James Monaco in The New York Times Review of Books, and Morris Dickstein in American Film.

Simon and Sarris have been at each other’s throats for years, and Simon’s review probably won’t change that, although he is surprisingly generous at times. Though he finds that the word “politics” is ill-defined as used in the title of the book, he does praise Sarris on Riefenstahl and State of Siege. He also finds Sarris an unaesthetic critic, rarely describing a film’s look, and a list-maker rather than an historian. Simon then makes a list of his own: Sarris’s grammatical errors. Surely the errors are correctly pointed out, but is Sarris totally to blame, since they could be the printer’s errors? Simon does find several insights in the book, however. Monaco’s review is more middle of the road, noting the obvious lack of political articles toward the end of the book, and giving a brief “the meaning of Sarris” analysis, which covers no new ground, but which uses the finalizing generalities one would expect from the Times. Dickstein’s is the longest, as well as the most positive, the author trying to place the book in its cultural context. He finds inconsistencies in Sarris, but views them as a sign of strength: “He reacts to films not out of preconceived political ideology but with a flash of gut instinct.” Dickstein goes on to compare Sarris to Orwell. But Dickstein’s review is an aid to defining the very act of criticism: “The test of any critic is his ability to keep his gaze planted steadily on the object; the test of a superior critic is his capacity to make the object exemplary, to connect it to general principles and significant ideas.” If ultimately I prefer the Dickstein, it is not only because it is positive, but because it educates, rather than just dictates, taste.

Of continual delight is American Cinematographer, for the simple reason that they print the best interviews in the field. Their recent two-part interview with Gordon Willis was much better than the elaborate and oblique New Yorker profile. While Rolling Stone will print a dull interview with Steven Spielberg on CE3K filled with Boy Scout anecdotes, AC will run a long, complex, and thoughtful (though technical) interview. Unfortunately, what with their yearly Oscar issue, and the cover stories on such films as King Kong and Love at First Bite, they can’t wuite shake the image of PR men for Hollywood clunkers. Also, the way they continue articles elsewhere in the issue is very confusing. Their excellent coverage of Big Wednesday more than makes up for their old-guard stance, and anyway, even reading about The Hurricane tells you something.

Woody Allen has put forth his two cents in Manhattan on novelizations, virtually blaming them for the general decline of civilized values. It is a bastard “art” that reaches such ludicrous depths as books based on the script to Richard Lester’s Three Musketeers (the Dumas classic just won’t do) and Grease, based on a musical, but sans music, sans dancing, sans singing, sans everything. Screenplays are just too “hard to read,” or so the publishers tell us. Now the Fotonovel™ comes along to recreate the film experience in paper form. Published by Fotonovel™ Publications in L.A., these books don’t show the most cogent artistic choices: so far the list includes Ice Castles, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Grease (again!), and recently Hair and The Champ, which came out just as the film did, serving as extended trailers for the films. It is not the fact that these fumettis do not recreate the “feel” of the film, the editing or what have you; after all, they can’t even recreate the dialogue accurately. The films are bowderized, thoughts are imposed on the characters, the frames are mutilated, the layout is confusing, and there are numerous explanatory paragraphs that state the obvious. And yet they could be so good, as good as Kubrick’s book of A Clockwork Orange. Kubrick took the time to match image and dialogue, and to reproduce accurately the image size, unlike Richard J. Anobile in his series, which distorted frames, printed them out of order, put dialogue in out of sync, and eventually started adding cartoon-like sound effects. Film students and critics need some way to refer to a film and check their memories. At one time one hoped that fumetti books would serve this function. So much for optimism.

From the anonymity of American Classic Screen, and a nonentity named James Welsh with his column called “Periodically Yours . . . ,” comes a particularly puerile and loathsome savaging of Cinemonkey. The subtitle, “a serious film journal,” apparently disturbs Mr. Welsh’s limited imagination, for he seems unable to see it as an ironic counterpoint to our startling and facetious title. He ridicules the intorduction to the Letter to Jane transcript (which he mysteriously calls a “typescript”), complaining about a dangling participial construction, when in fact his whole column is written in a sloppy, incomprehensible style that shows no natural feel for language. He criticizes (though the verb loses all meaning in the hands of hacks) the Pretty Baby parody as being “pretty awful,” offering as proof one joke which he fails to print in its entirety. Later he makes his own impoverished pun while discussing an article in Cinegram on Wim Wenders, who tells a “chicken story [which] seems rather paltry (which is not to say poultry).” Talking about the “Notes” section, Welsh says it “is written by someone identified, whimsically, I thought (wrongly), as ‘N.O. Grace.’” Welsh cannot even write a coherent sentence. What the hell does he mean? Am I real or not? This nonsensical construction, with its misplaced parenthesis, seems to suggest that I don’t exist. Welsh would be well advised to discuss ideas rather than identities. The fact that Welsh sent a query to this magazine’s editor concerning an on-the-set piece about the new Star Trek film, and was refused, probably has nothing to do with his vile appraisal of Cinemonkey. And it is probably a printer’s error that, in his list of subjects I discussed, Lacan’s name is spelled “Lucan.”

On a more serious level, the level of a mind engaged in the world of ideas, Andrew Britton’s article, “The Ideology of Screen,” in Movies 26 is brilliant. He analyzes the three leading ideological fathers of the magazine, Althusser, Lacan, and Barthes, and discusses the flaws in their thinking, following the inconsistencies on to Screen and showing how they weaken Screen’s project. This is not a discussion of films, but of theory, and though the piece is dense, it is also literate, well written, and convincing. In a more perfect world of the piece would spark off a round of debate, and perhaps it will eventually cause more response in England than over here. Nevertheless, Britton makes it possible to diagree violently with Screen without looking like a reactionary. I strongly urge the reading of this article.