Despite the ubiquity of formalized film studies—textbooks, innumerable classes, specialized programs—amassed film criticism has long been a valuable source of cinematic insight. Quite some time before secondary schools and the academy officialized how and why movies were talked about, movies were written about in a wide variety of ways: in the pages of prominent newspapers, in widely circulating magazines catering to fans, in occasional magazine columns by enthusiastic intellectuals, and by everyday moviegoers, in journals and diaries that were never positioned to see the light of day.
Cover art by Jon-Mikel Gates
At some early moment in the proceeds, an embryonic version of the film critic was born. While movies certainly had been reviewed along the lines of other consumer products (in relation to how well they fulfilled the expectations of a genre, in terms of emotional delivery to an expectant audience, etc.), others began to notice the elements which now constitute cinephilia in a richer, more fully lived sense. A critic might comment upon the tendencies of an actor, director, or cameraman across a whole series of films; might identify technical shortcomings as an occasion to discuss more widespread concerns in filmic technique or process; and could very well use the moral, ethical, or ideological tendencies found to be in a film as a battleground for a whole range of intellectual struggles.
Reading these critics is still a delight, long after the prescient moments for their initial reviews has past. My exposure to them has almost entirely been through collected editions of their criticism. I often find myself flipping through my copy of The Dilys Powell Reader (Oxford UP, 1993) in order to see how Ms. Powell—an erudite critic for a transitional era—perceived the tumultuous tides occasioned by European art cinema of the late 1960s. By the same token, I find myself laughing at the moral indignation put forth by such stern critics as John Simon, whose collections like Movies into Film (Dell, 1972) preserve a moment of elitist outrage to mixed-use cinema (i.e., cinema that expertly conflates the "high" and the "low," the "sacred" and the "vulgar") that hasn't since been rivaled. Of course, Pauline Kael might well be the master of this form. A book like Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang (1968, but often reprinted) is an occasion to read Kael's collected reviews for the leading publications of the day, but it also gives audiences (especially audiences who never had the chance to read Ms. Kael at her height) a chance to see just how high the stakes of film criticism once were. In Kael, we get an agonisitic and antagonistic writer whose prose challenges you to disagree, and then slaps you in the face for having the audacity to do so.
How and where these books of collected film criticism appear has fluctuated along with the publishing industry. To set the scene a bit, during the late 1960s, cinema-going remained dominant enough as a pass-time to validate a whole wave of popular publications related to many different aspects of film. This was the era of what Mark Betz, in an excellent essay for the edited anthology Inventing Film Studies (2008, Duke University Press), has called "little books": pocket-sized picturebacks by Studio Vista, Praeger, University of California Press, and others, often detailing a genre or director in considerable depth, with many accompanying photo illustrations. In this pre-VCR era, these books were one of the few ways to have reference material related to a film (plot summary, cast & crew credits) on the ready. Many of the century's best critics and biographers—for example Raymond Durgnat, Robin Wood, and John Baxter—published extensively in this format. At the same time, big publishers like Penguin and Plume could release mass market paperbacks relevant to the cinema. My copy of Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang and at least a few of my books on the Marx Brothers might well have been originally been displayed next to the latest genre fiction. Today, virtually the only film history/reference book to garner recurrent mass market publication is the yearly update to Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide, which at well over 1500 pages is set to outgrow the format.
More specialized film criticism anthologies published at a later date (for example, the above-mentioned Dilys Powell Reader, or David Parkinson's edited Graham Greene Film Reader) were released by specialty publishing houses (Oxford UP, Carcanet, Applause Books) in large hardback and trade paperback formats. These were always positioned for niche audiences, and boasted comprehensive career coverage (as opposed to practicing critics like Simon and Kael, who regularly published updated collections). Their sometimes massive size (the Greene reader is nearly 700 pages) will likely scare away the timid.
Most recently, with the every-increasing sorts of catalog specialization germinated by publishers, university presses have been one of the few outlets for these types of books. David Sterritt and Jonathan Rosenbaum, both active critics, have gone this route. Though retired from the critical posts that made them famous, both have taught criticism in a university context. Their relation to academia gives their early critical work a new valence. Given the sometimes precarious distribution of university press titles, these books are most specifically marketed to libraries. A definite upside is the "archive quality" feel of university press books. While my copy of Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang is yellowing and nearly disintegrated, Rosenbaum's University of California Press titles will withstand the elements, as well as negligent storage.
This brings me to Stephen R. Bissette. Although known primarily for his work in comics—as an artist for a famed run of Swamp Thing, publisher of the innovative Tyrant, and creator or co-creator of several long-lived characters (including John Constantine)—I first became familiar with him as a writer on film. As an avid reader of Video Watchdog, I'd seen his name attached to many fine DVD reviews. Years after this initial notice, I stumbled upon his website/personal blog Myrant, a thoroughly illustrated and often encyclopedic web portal that contains many multi-part film and pop culture essays. The level of detail continues to astonish. Needless to say, I'd noticed that he had been experimenting with some of the newly available avenues for print-on-demand/self-publishing.
Cover art by Jon-Mikel Gates
His Blur series, now totaling five volumes, was originally conceived as a place to collect his voluminous film criticism, much of which dates to the late 1990s and early 2000s. Although he had been writing for genre publications for years, much of stuff corresponds to a moment where he was also managing a video store: his reviews, published mainly in regional newspapers and Video Watchdog, directly related to the weekly world of new release video. To read volumes 1-4 is to see a comprehensive account of American (and some "world") cinema during that important transitional moment from VHS to DVD. This vantage was particularly resonant for me: my first job, dating back to 2000, was as a video store clerk. I remember seeing many of these films with the same sense of urgency and at roughly the same times. Volume 5 of Blur is a collection of pieces that had appeared on his blog. These pieces have a slightly less functionalist bent (i.e. they were written for a much different audience, and without the same sense of purpose that is appended to rapidly furnished journalism), and often deal in deeper catalog releases. He apparently has plans for a collection called Gooseflesh, which will assemble pieces from a variety of horror/cult publications, most of which have long-since ceased publication.
So, aside from the historical context of the initial Blur volumes, Bissette's project—collections of his writings, both ephemeral and timeless—strikes me as important (and as a model for other prolific critics) in that it combines material from sources that are almost impossible to otherwise access in anything like a systematic way. As a freelancer, you write where the gigs are, which often means doing columns for publications that don't necessarily circulate beyond specified geographic boundaries, or outside of relatively circumscribed communities. To read these pieces in their original contexts would mean targeted archival research well beyond the means of most fans or interested parties.
But there seems to be a deeper lesson, as well, one having to do with the usefulness of specific technologies for specific purposes. Bissette publishes the Blur books through Black Coat Press, an important imprint that uses print-on-demand technology to disseminate a wide variety of fantastic works (many obscure) by noted genre personalities. In each instance, they appear to specialize in niche titles that would otherwise be lost in the shuffle of traditional publishing models, or deemed too risky for the big publishing houses. Beyond Bissette's archival project, Black Coat Press has made a name for itself as a publisher of translated editions of foundational genre fiction. Important science fiction author Brian Stableford regularly releases translation and new works of fiction through them, at an often astonishingly accelerated pace.
So, Bissette's gambit with this new technological avenue strikes me as ideally suited to projects like a collected set of volumes of film criticism. With big publishers (and even university presses) shying away from these useful reference guides, more flexible and personalized ventures seem best. While much remains uncertain—it is hard to tell how profitable these titles will prove (in the long run), how (or if) they will be distributed beyond internet retailers, and how readily these titles will be purchased by university and public libraries—the very fact of these book's availability, in any format, is praiseworthy enough. While film criticism in the older sense might be slowly disappearing under the collective weight of 140 character reviewers and crowdsourced ratings, and while books might slowly be inched off of shelves in favor of gadgets, the specificity afforded by flexible publishing means a (potentially) brave new world for fans and completists.
