comment #1

Sean says ...

Diegetic music is music the characters can hear -- it's music in the movie's world. Non-diegetic music is music only the audience can hear.

comment #2

berg says ...

he left out mention of rudolph arnheim?

comment #3

nemo says ...

Man, I actually knew what diegetic sound is, and read some Kracauer and Barthes in college. The only thing saving me from being an elitist dweeb is that I'd never think of dropping references to that stuff.

Shouldn't an elitist dweeb also be dropping references to Metz and Bazin?

This does give me a chance to say I saw "California Split" this past weekend for the first time in 30 years, and I was blown away by Altman's masterful use of diegetic sound throughout, especially in the casino and horse track scenes. Elitist dweeb mode off.

comment #4

malibugigolo says ...

A true critic would just make a movie of his own.

comment #5

jesse says ...

What I find so odd about the Bergan piece and the accompanying refutations and agreements is that no one mentions the sheer impracticality of what he (and others with a similar mindset) encourage. If aspiring film critics waited until they had even close to Bergan's prerequisites, they'd be picking up their pens around age 50 or so. Nothing against older critics, but do we want *every* film critic to be an academic on the upper cusp of middle age?

I suppose you could hit his marks sooner -- if you more or less lived the life of a shut-in and devoted yourself entirely to film education and self-education, in which case you would lose a lot of perspective on actual life, which presumably can help your writing more than a little.

This is not to say that fresh-faced videogame-obsessed 22-year-olds should consider themselves insta-qualified to write informed movie reviews, but I'd like to think that it's within their grasp, if they're inquisitive and open and have a talent for writing. I'd like to think that I, at 26 and with about five, maybe ten percent of the film knowledge of someone like Bergan, can still contribute something, however small, to a film review that some average-Joe "guy on the street" -- even if, as far as Bergan is concerned, I'm at that same level.

comment #6

christian says ...

"diegetic and non-diegetic music and being unfamiliar with the writings of Siegfried Kracauer and Roland Barthes (which I am guilty of on all counts) is not going to hurt you that much in this day and age. In fact, referring to these criteria with any regularity will mark you as some kind of elitist dweeb."

i learned all of this jargon at berkeley as a film major. and i still like godzilla movies. this is all part of film theory, which effectively removes the artist from the work in favor of the theorist. and the pretentions of these folk are legion. i laughed my way through ucb film courses.

but jeff, you're the one who j'accuses the rubes of america on a daily basis, so i'm not sure if you consider yourself an elitist dweeb too...

comment #7

jeffmcm says ...

Some of these people are pretentious, but many of them are also valuable. If you laughed your way through your film courses, you wasted a lot of time and money.

comment #8

Geoff says ...

diegetic and non-diegetic....In my films studies we explored Punch-Drunk Love, which is a pretty wild film when it comes to sound design. Brilliant stuff.

comment #9

christian says ...

"If you laughed your way through your film courses, you wasted a lot of time and money."

i went to school late and already knew my shit. in fact i taught classes at ucb because incoming film students were being overwhelmed with foucault and had never even seen THE GRADUATE.

i'm happy that i know the diagetic stuff and all the theorists because more knowledge is not hurtful -- unless you're attempting film in hollywood. but the theory language was often somberly ridiculous and as a writer, i get offended by taking three pages to state what could be said in two paragraphs.

i also laughed when my film history teacher decided not to show BIRTH OF A NATION anymore. i laughed in irony/sorrow because the concept of censoring films for berkeley students is pathetic.

comment #10

jeffmcm says ...

That's fine, just don't throw out the baby of useful film theory with the bathwater of your crummy professors.

comment #11

p.Vice says ...

I think what Bergan is pointing out is that NOBODY is qualified to be a film critic anymore - that the art form has lost its ability to become art, because everyone is too stupid to appreciate it as such. Hence why dimits like ol' Wells here somehow manage to be taken seriously despite their repeated self-embarassments trying to defend bullshit like Reign Over Me. If nobody understood the concept of money, all those dollar bills would just be pieces of paper.

comment #12

christian says ...

"That's fine, just don't throw out the baby of useful film theory with the bathwater of your crummy professors."

curb your tude jeff. i was there, you apparently were not. my "crummy professors" were the ones writing the theory books still used today and also pimping the overwrought lexicon. it didn't instill a love of film in the students, instead it often turned them into marxist-semioticist navel-gazers reducing every image to the assaultive male gaze.

tho i had an amazing film noir professor, most of the teachers were humorless, despised american cinema and were far too entrenched in pc academia.

comment #13

Craig Kennedy says ...

Call me a helmet wearing, window licking, short bus riding moron, but the things Bergan considers important amount to more of a lifelong pursuit than a checklist of things you should toss off before writing about film. Reading and seeing all the things he talks about is one thing, but absorbing them is something else. I'm comfortably familiar with a number of the things he itemizes, but not everything and I doubt my knowledge runs really deep. I just saw my first Czech film from the mid 60's (Closely Watched Trains) and somehow I doubt I'll ever get to all the stuff I think I should be exposed to. The list seems endless. Of course I don't presume to be any kind of a film critic either.

I also think that people with huge gaps in their knowledge of cinema history can still contribute to the dialogue in interesting ways.

On the other hand, it seems like the natural tendency of anything is to fall to the lowest common denominator or the path of least resistance, so it's important for people to always be trying to raise the bar.

comment #14

jeffmcm says ...

Sorry, Christian, but you're the one who said you were laughing at them, which = 'crummy' in my book. That said, maybe they were better writers than they were lecturers.

comment #15

berg says ...

the art form of film is over ... just like paintings from the 19th century that looked photo realistic when you see them in museums but look odd when juxtaposed with jackson pollock ... the art form of film was over when camcorder movies began being distributed by studios ...

comment #16

jeffmcm says ...

Berg, what do you mean when you say 'the art form of film'? Are you talking about celluloid?

In my experience, it's not the 19th century paintings that look odd, it's the Pollocks.

comment #17

Joshua Mooney says ...

I guess if you want to teach film at the college level. Otherwise, what's the point? You're talking about a medium that's been around for a hundred years (barely), and serious criticism of it from, what, the '30s through the '80s? Film "critics" exist for the scholars now, which is probably 5% of the viewing audience. Film "reviewers"-- quite a different thing-- used to have to prove themselves as well, until the internet. Now, everyone's got an opinion--- and everybody ELSE buys it. Democracy in action. DEATH to the elitist film critic! (Yeah, you too, Armond White.)

comment #18

christian says ...

"i laughed my way through ucb courses" is the quote. meaning that i was bemused by the theorizing, not mocking my marxist profs. still i did have fun writing footnoted essays on ASSAULT ON PRECINT 13 using urban post-war analysis...

comment #19

jeffmcm says ...

So...you had a good, stimulating education, it sounds like, which you would recommend to others?

comment #20

christian says ...

i would recomend it after you've embarked on your own film education which ucb did not provide gven its status as the film theory school. when i was there in the late 90's, the film dept had one editing machine from 1985. if you think that sounds stimulating, sure.

it's about balance: ucla will teach you how to make crap and ucb will teach you how to dissect the crap. and usc will teach you how to get into the industry. but an 18 year old looking for a holistic film education deserves more.

comment #21

christian says ...

that said, being on a college campus surrounded by hot women in mini-skirts and boots who are into antonioni is stimulating.

comment #22

Craig Kennedy says ...

Just thinking about that is stimulating. I wish I knew in college how good things were.