Word: huston
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This alone, of course, cannot explain the great bitterness Kauffmann implied. There are many other reasons why Huston has been the target of decisive vitriol...
Most American film critics, it seems, find it difficult to empathize with American filmmakers. Perhaps the great sense of shame critics express when American talent begins to fade comes from the fact that artists, in a romantic critical view, are not supposed to act like "normal people"; thus, when Huston cashes in on his name, he is accused of "selling out" to commercial enterprise. It is something we tolerate-nay, inculcate in our society, even while recognizing its basic immorality. A figure who enjoys making films and making money equally well is an easy target for guilt-ridden liberals...
WHEN Myra Breckinridge premiered last July. Stanley Kauffmann wrote that John Huston's performance in such tripe was what he had come to expect from the once-deified director; that whenever he went to see a film which Huston either acted in or directed, he couldn't help thinking of how much the late James Agee had admired him. Kauffmann thought the wrong man died...
Second, it puts even the most timid of souls into an anarchic critical position of imagined danger. Sarris continually rants and raves against the "literary critical Establishment." He also bears a curious, love-hate relationship with the motion picture viewing audience, scolding an "out" director like Huston for attempting to insure their recognition of the tensions in Reflections in a Golden Eye, but scolding them when they fail to show up for the latest Bresson. The enemy is everywhere; thus does armchair iconoclasm reach new heights of tired antagonism...
...film making that is currently unfashionable: the straightforward, uncluttered private-eye melodrama that was so much a part of the American cinema of the '40s. It is a tradition to which Godard payed homage in Breathless, and out of which came some first-rate film makers like John Huston...