Quotes

[after seeing "Straw Dogs"] For the first time in my life, I felt concern for the future of the cinema.

[on "Anne Of The Thousand Days"] The film looks magnificent, but uninterestingly magnificent; in spite of all the processions and celebrations, a static, schoolroom-wall picture.

A day comes in the life of a critic when it is not enough for a film to be well-made. "Rosemary's Baby" is conspicuously well-made. But it is insufferably silly.

[on Vivien Leigh's performance in "Gone With The Wind"]: Miss Leigh gave a performance compact of vivacity, coquettishness and rigid egoism, extremely clever and well-trained and almost entirely without interest.

[on "The Seventh Seal"]: Mr. Bergman, I am sure, has a midnight, Arctic-winter sincerity: the violence of my dislike of his film is probably evidence of that. Did I say "The Seventh Seal" was sobering? On me, it has the impact of one of those spiked iron balls chained to a club, so popular in films about goodwill in the Middle Ages.

[on "Ben-Hur"]: One can tolerate the second-rate if it escapes comparison with the first-rate; not when, as here, it constantly recalls the tremendous Christian myth. Beside the august simplicity of the Gospels on which it draws, "Ben-Hur" dwindles to an oleo-graph.

[Explaining why it was "impossible" to chose a list of Ten Best films] We all know how difficult it is to choose the bet films. It must be easier to choose one's favorites; but it isn't. After all these years of looking and enjoying as a critic, the titles knock at memory, not by the dozen, but by the hundred. What it comes down to is indulgence in revived pleasure. Possibly the passage of decades of critical analysis and selection may have left some faint trace; pleasure, it is hoped, has not erased judgment. But it is fateful to reflect. Better to let memory drift. I think of great Hitchcock, and there is an image from "Psycho," I think of an evening before I dreamed of becoming a critic, and there is the discovery of Rene Clair. One recalls at random: an incident, a joke, and exquisite gesture. Better to do no more.

(on film genres) No other art form can handle the theme with the same assurance, can turn the movement of man and horse against landscape into magic. Westerns and thrillers - they are the backbone of the screen. The musical is its enhancing decoration, while comedy, which embraces wit and laughter, is still the heart of true cinema,

[on "Black Narcissus", 1947]: This is a film of astonishing quality.

[on Josef Von Sternberg's autobiography]: Half autobiography, half vitriol, a compendium of wicked portraits from Jannings to Laughton. A quite unforgivable book - and I couldn't stop reading it and laughing over it.