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Letter about Michel Ciment
Cineaste editor Gary Crowdus invited me to write a letter for the Summer 2024 issue commenting on an interview they ran with the late Michel Ciment. Here’s what I sent and what they published. (Note: I was subsequently commissioned by Sticking Place Books’ Paul Cronin to be interviewed for the second volume in the series inaugurated by Michel Ciment and A Shared Cinema. I invited my friend Ehsan Khoshbakht, a programmer at Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna, to be my interlocutor, and the result, Travels in the Cities of Cinema, will be out this spring.) — J.R. The Lasting Influence of France’s Michel Ciment In N.T. Binh’s interview with the late Michel Ciment, labeled “The Seven Cardinal Virtues of the Critic,” responding to a question about the advice he’d give to an aspiring critic, Ciment replies, “First and foremost, the temptation to be avoided at all costs…is to want a film to be something other than what its author set out to make.” But if I were asked the same question, I’d be tempted to reply, “Above all, don’t con yourself into believing that a work’s conscious or unconscious intentions can be objectively known, even by its author, much less used as a basis for any value judgment.” Read more
Cineaste editor Gary Crowdus invited me to write a letter for the Summer 2024 issue commenting on an interview they ran with the late Michel Ciment. Here’s what I sent and what they published. (Note: I was subsequently commissioned by Sticking Place Books’ Paul Cronin to be interviewed for the second volume in the series inaugurated by Michel Ciment and A Shared Cinema. I invited my friend Ehsan Khoshbakht, a programmer at Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna, to be my interlocutor, and the result, Travels in the Cities of Cinema, will be out this spring.) — J.R.
The Lasting Influence of France’s Michel Ciment
In N.T. Binh’s interview with the late Michel Ciment, labeled “The Seven Cardinal Virtues of the Critic,” responding to a question about the advice he’d give to an aspiring critic, Ciment replies, “First and foremost, the temptation to be avoided at all costs…is to want a film to be something other than what its author set out to make.” But if I were asked the same question, I’d be tempted to reply, “Above all, don’t con yourself into believing that a work’s conscious or unconscious intentions can be objectively known, even by its author, much less used as a basis for any value judgment.” Read more
