PARTISAN REVIEW
115
actors (particularly women ), and of homosexuality. Simon has defended
his talent scout resumes of actors' and actresses' physical characteristics
by saying that film is a visual medium. That hardly justifies ugly com–
ments like these: "The daughter is played by Anne Wiazemsky, in pri–
vate life Mme. Godard, possessed of the face of a horse, the teeth of a
rabbit, and the expression of an amoeba." "And there is the supreme
horror of the film, Mick Jagger, whose lack of talent is equaled only
by a repulsiveness of epic proportions - on those shocking-pink blubber–
lips alone a complete
Iliad
and
Odyssey
could be inscribed. Jagger
looks so epicene. .. ." A related form of sexual bias can be found in
Simon's malice toward homosexuality, disturbing in a man of intelli–
gence. Consider the venom he wastes on
Something for Everyone,
a
mediocre, trifling film directed by Harold Prince. Simon ferrets out a
disguised homosexual vision underlying the film, attacks what he con–
siders its distorted view of women - though nothing in the film could
possibly match the viciousness of his own slurs against Angela Lansbury
("an aging female impersonator gone sloppy, who allows himself to be
photographed in costume but without a wig - a bisected androgyne,
woman below, man on top . . . a fag hag") . And he is so eager to prove
the sickness of the film that he almost willfully misinterprets the satiric
portrait of an ex-Nazi servant - a minor character in the movie - as
an idealization of Nazism traceable to the filmmakers' alleged homo–
sexuality.
Simon is an extreme case, but not really unrepresentative ; out–
rageous sexual biases and irrelevant affirmations of masculinity crop up
fairly regularly in film criticism. Perhaps it has something to do with
the number of prominent female film critics, who seem to threaten the
egos of many male reviewers. Or this quirk of film criticism may reflect
the widespread antiintellectual bias of American society, the fear that
if one is a critic or an artist, one is less than a man. This is only one
more indication of the debased quality of contemporary film criticism;
it is even infected by a rancid intellectualized form of machismo.
*
*
*
After reading the mysticism of Sarris or the invective of Simon,
it is always a pleasure to turn to Pauline Kael, who is by far the best
critic now writing regularly about films in America. The marvelous
thing is that she is never straitjacketed, as Simon is, by some rigid aca–
demic notion of what a critique should be. She ignores formal rules,
ranges freely over a film, discussing its themes, its social implications,
its evasions, even moving quite unashamedly into autobiography if that
can help to illuminate issues that the film raises. Often, in fact, the
movie is merely a springboard for ideas that interest her more - re–
cently the film
Billy Jack
led her into a discussion of the image of
wo-
