PARTISAN REVIEW
113
class consumer guidance. His typical review consists of a lengthy plot
summary and a scorecard, with capsule evaluations of each contrihutor's
achievement - a few lines about the writer, director, cinematographer,
composer, art director, costume designer, and actors. Writing aJbout
theater, Simon does seem - at times anyway - more involved, more
willing to take on a challenging work and examine its texture and all
of its implications. With f,ilms he remains aloof, a patronizing gentle–
man-critic who never seems fully engaged unless there is something to
denounce. He kills interest by pretending that films can be managed
with geometrical precision. Near the opening of
his
review of
The Grad–
uate,
he writes, "The movie's principal weaknesses are oversimplifica–
tion, overelaboration, inconsistency, eclecticism, obviousness, pretentious–
ness, and, especially in the penultimate section, sketchiness. Let us ex–
amine these one by one."
It
is not that I disagree with this evaluation
of
The Graduate;
but Simon writes with a smug schoolmaster's con–
descension that is a poor substitute for the ecstasies of the less intelli–
gent reviewers.
Another irony about John Simon is that his reputation as a "scrup–
ulously toughminded" critic (as Dwight Macdonald characterized him )
does not hold up under close scrutiny.
It
is true that he has blasted
films like
8Y2,
Morgan, Point Blank, Bonnie and Clyde, Petulia, Per–
formance, The Music Lovers, The Conformist,
everything by Godard–
films that are far from equally successful, but that I would include
among the most important of the last decade. Among the films Simon
has reviewed rather favorably, however, are sentimental or sensational
trash like
Mondo Cane, Dear John, Goodbye Mr. Chips, Joe, Friends,
Long Ago Tomorrow,
and most recently, the tricky, fatuously euphoric
film of
Slaughterhouse-Five.
His praise of
Long Ago Tomorrow
-
a
tear-jerking love story of two paraplegics against 'the system, barely
competent mush - will be especially hard for him to live down. It does
reveal that underneath his hard, cynical shell quivers just another bleed–
ing heart. Simon rejects the experiments of Fellini, Lester, and Godard
- in order to swoon over a soap opera by Bryan Forbes. To give an–
other example, Simon opened his rave review of Raoul Coutard's
H
oa
Binh
with a schoolmarm's homily:
"If
there is such a thing as a film
that makes its viewer a better human being - and I dearly hope there
is -
Hoa Binh
is it." I had to reread ,the byline to make sure the article
had not been written by Richard Nixon. Set in Saigon,
Hoa Binh
is in
fact a pleasant, nicely observed, very well made film, but in the last
analysis much too soft; its nonpartisan message - an unobjectionable
plea to end the war so that the children can be saved - is an overly
