PARTISAN REVIEW
119
prejudices. For example, William Pechter - whose collection of cntl–
cism,
Twenty-Four Times a Second,
has recently been published–
writes regularly for
Commentary,
and has also published long articles
in a number of other small magazines; he certainly has the space to de–
velop an argument. But even in his best pieces, for example the one
on
Breathless,
a great deal of the discussion centers on an analysis of
dialogue and plot. Film is a hybrid art, and there is certainly room for
discussion of dialogue, dramatic, and literary qualities of movies. But
the qualities unique to film are rarely analyzed even by our most in–
telligent critics.
It
may be, as I happen to believe, that film is still in
its development stages; there are many interesting or entertaining
movies, but I think there are far fewer masterpieces than the scholars
and cultists would have us believe, and I feel most of the important
experiments in film have come in the last fifteen years or so. But if film
is in its adolescence, film criticism is still in its infancy, and we are wait–
ing for a critical langua:ge that can encompass the full range of the
medium's possibilities.
TAPESTRIES BY
GLORIA F. ROSS &
Davis Goodnough Trova
Louis
Frankenthaler
Gottlieb
Stella
Nevelson Motherwell Youngerman
Poons
Noland
Smith
Feeley
PACE EDITIONS
32 EAST 57 STREET NEW YORK
