Roger Ebert back to print

I'm with Patrick Goldstein of the L.A. Times: it's fine by me that Roger Ebert is leaving TV, and going back to print journalism full time. He's such an enjoyable film critic to read, even when you don't agree with him (and often I didn't). And truly, he's a kind man. I had the occasion to be in his company and talk to him at the Sundance and Toronto film festivals way back in my film critic days, and I was surprised by how unpretentious and open he was. He was by far the most famous film critic in America, but he didn't carry himself with any kind of hauteur. Despite all his erudition, he was just a guy who liked the movies, and knew how to write about them.

Goldstein points out that Ebert has a quite good blog. I'm so glad to learn this. Take, for example, his explaining how he approached his recent analysis of the Leni Riefenstahl Nazi propaganda film "Triumph of the Will." Here's Ebert, telling how he tried to understand the film's aesthetic accomplishments apart from the fact that the shimmering beauty of Riefenstahl's work trumpeted great evil:

The film itself informed me how I was to review it, and this process took place during the act of viewing. What I wrote will have to await publication day of the article. But these are general observations:

I wrote about what I saw, and how I felt when I saw it. I decided not to devote long paragraphs to rehearsing the evils of Nazism, as if that subject was not already pretty well settled. I was not pious in my denunciations, as if I had something to prove. I simply wrote about the sounds and the pictures.

IOW, as Ebert later put it, he taught himself to look "at the screen, not at the reputation." That's a hard thing to do with any movie, for a young critic just starting out. You are so influenced by the judgments of others, and afraid of your own judgments. But that's why Ebert's a pro. When I was doing movie reviewing professionally, people would often say to me, "What an easy job that is, going to the movies and writing about them." It seems like it, but you try to sit down and write at least 700 words explaining why a film works, or doesn't work, and to do so entertainingly. It's hard work. After I quit professional reviewing, it took me a long time to be able to simply enjoy a film again, instead of constantly analyzing it.

Anyway, you try watching something like "Triumph of the Will" and offering a cold, formal analysis of it without succumbing to rote formalism or banging out an emotional screed against Nazism. Then you'll appreciate how good Roger Ebert is at his craft.