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meld to make a movie, self-appointed mavens— judging only what they receive as they sit in the theater—do the Critical Judgment Thing. They decide this actor was lame, that director can't handle action sequences, this noble scenarist's brilliant vision has been martyred, that producer is a venal swine who has sold out Art for Commerce.
     
    And all of it is spinach.
     
    With a universal constituency for film, everyone feels arrogantly competent . . . no, not even competent  . . . divinely inspired . . . to pass judgments down to the most minute facets of the film. At a kaffee klatsch, that's just fine. Just peachykeen. In scholarly journals, and in allegedly critical reviews, it is unacceptable.
     
    So the problem, as I see it, that most presses us when we talk about "film scholarship" is setting minimal standards of cinematic knowledge. And I don't mean those used to hand out such horseshit awards as Golden Globes or Oscars every year.
     
    I'm not suggesting that before someone can speak with wisdom about movies that s/he must be able to quote verbatim from Siegfried Kracauer, Paul Rotha or Terry Ramsaye (though it wouldn't hurt to have such a rich background). What I am suggesting is that the least we must demand of anyone who sets him/herself up as a critic of film, is that said Oracle strive to operate on the level of, say, Agee, Arthur Knight (of The Liveliest Art ), Stanley Kauffmann, Molly Haskell, or just Pauline Kael.
     
    This means, also, that the scholar should love film. Should adore just going to the movies, the way a kid adores going to the movies. Bearing with, a large measure of innocence; a large measure of I'll sit here, you just do it to me . Just purely love it, to the degree that s/he is willing to savage that which is inept, dishonest, historically corrupt, pretentious or simply meanspirited. That which demeans the art form. That which lies to the trusting audience. That which rusts our innocence for no greater purpose than to con us out of our ticket money and get us ready to be manipulated into laying-out for the mendacious sequels.
     
    By this standard, I discount such critics as John Simon. As brilliant and as uncompromising as Simon's dance and legitimate stage reviews are, as correct as I think he is most of the time, as deeply as I admire his erudition and his insights and his vivid writing, to the same degree do I find his film reviews unacceptable. He clearly thinks of film as a second-class art form, and it shows in every line he writes about cinema.
     
    (He is not alone in this dichotomous, ambivalent attitude; and more on that in a moment.)
     
    He does not love film as he loves the theater or ballet, and his Elitism seems thus, to me, corrupt. It does not escape my sense of the self-serving or ridiculous that as an Elitist I'm saying my brand of nobler-than-thou is more peachykeen than thine or Simon's. I got that. Nonetheless, I speak of these matters and make comparisons not to contemn John Simon—whose work I find constantly thought-provoking, which is precisely what a critic is supposed to do, in my view—but to make sure the reader knows I have no secret agendas. I think it is above-all-else urgent that the reader of film criticism be able to trust that the critic is right out there, holding nothing back, being absolutely candid.
     
    It means, also, that the kind of overintellectualized barbarism of critics- manqué who see deep, redemptive significance in Night of the Living Dead films, though they "have problems" with Brazil or Apocalypse Now , cannot be considered apropos. We must remember that Philistinism makes lucid copy for dolts, and we must resist crediting that kind of thing, lest all standards be downgraded and eventually become flummery.
     
    I would add that most temporal concerns when judging film are also suspect. Deconstruction, a trendy way of examining films these days, coupled with Marxist Feminist Dystopic Reified Orthodontist criticism (or