I am not quite convinced that our society is all that sick as this film's exegetes would have it, but assuming that it is, cures like this "satire" are considerably worse than the disease. In the context of movies, but applicable also to theater, John W. English writes in his book Criticizing the Critics: “High-brow [sic] critics such as John Simon are often intrigued by witticisms, puns and cleverly reworked phrases, a form of intellectual gamesmanship. Rafferty and the Gold Dust Twins (Rafferty and the Highway Hustlers), Le Fantôme de la Liberté (The Phantom of Liberty) (The Specter of Freedom), Scenes from a Marriage (Scener ur ett äktenskap), Best Netflix Shows and Series To Binge (March 2021), The 100 Best Movies on Netflix Right Now (March 2021). NEW YORK (AP) — John Simon, a theater and film critic known for his lacerating reviews and often withering assessment of performers’ physical appearance, has died. He also contributed an occasional essay to The Weekly Standard. Both genres have undergone decades of refining, and Charley Varrick is one of the more accomplished specimens of the latter. But few reviewers were as hilariously savage as John Simon, with New York Magazine, who called it “a set of giant baubles manipulated by an infant mind.” Top image: New York Magazine, 1977. [17] In retaliation, Miles dumped a plate of food, mostly steak tartare (not pasta, as had been misreported), onto Simon's head in the popular New York restaurant O'Neal's. But positive reviews tend to be taken for granted, while negative ones are seen as personal insults. Much that has been hailed as Buñuel's profundity is merely self-purgation: catharsis for himself rather than for his audience. The goal, I suspect, is to encompass the whole range of good movies, and despise the unworthy ones. [9][10] At the time of his death, he lived in Manhattan with his wife, Patricia Hoag-Simon, whom he had married in 1992. George Lucas has directed with a remarkably firm but unostentatious hand, two virtues equally rare in a young film maker. Ron Galella Collection /Getty Images). Patricia Hoag Simon, Simon’s wife, said her husband died Sunday night at Westchester Medical Center. I never once looked at my watch or wished the film would end. Simon was the theater critic at New York for 36 years from October 1968 until May 2005. The film has going for it a well-observed milieu, a rich gallery of colorful locals, and a wealth of incident that sometimes gets out of hand. The film profits immeasurably from the performance of Robert De Niro, a Northerner who completely transformed himself into the Georgia cracker with the fatal crack running through him. Theatrical producers in particular become enraged when reviews do not sound like one of their press releases. Ash Wednesday is so bad that even Liz Taylor's performance becomes almost inconspicuous in it. and Kevin Lincoln. "[18], In The Language Instinct, Steven Pinker criticized Simon for reviews obsessively focusing on actors' physical appearances to the detriment of critical acumen. Fosse and Barry never figured out for themselves how this nothingy little comic grew into a heroic figure and, rightly or wrongly, a legend. This is altogether one of those lamentable films in which false clues are constantly tossed at the viewer -- events that could not have happened in this particular way in the light of the explanations given later. Recommends it for: cinemaphiles who read. I had completely forgotten this experience. All rights reserved. He … and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes and Fandango. John Ivan Simon (né Simmon; May 12, 1925 − November 24, 2019) was an American author and literary, theater, and film critic. Aug 30, 2007 Bleak Mouse rated it it was amazing. For example, he was known for dwelling on what he saw as the physical flaws of those actors who displeased him: Wallace Shawn is "unsightly", Barbra Streisand's nose "cleaves the giant screen from east to west, bisects it from north to south. Though this may be the commonest motive for artistic creation, it is, by itself, insufficient. A mess -- precisely because it is neither fact nor imaginative fiction. was a parody of John Simon, according to Bogdanovich. Murder on the Orient Express is that unusual thing; an inflated trifle that actually works. NEW YORK (AP) — John Simon, a theater and film critic known for his lacerating reviews and often withering assessment of performers’ physical appearance, has died. John Ivan Simon (né Simmon;[2] May 12, 1925 − November 24, 2019) was an American author and literary, theater, and film critic. The film is admirable visually, verbally, psychologically. John Simon would not have enjoyed one second of it. The film, at any rate, closely resembles every other predigested, semiliterate, mistily mystagogic piece of hope-mongering with which seekers after Great Life-giving Truths in small packages have been traditionally gulled. He has said that his middle name "Ivan" was later added by his father to add distinction. 4", "Looking Back at New York's Critical 1977 Review of Star Wars", "The Real John Simon: Did the late, splenetic theater and film critic take a secret to his grave? [26], The character of Hugh Simon (played by Kenneth Mars) in Peter Bogdanovich's film What's Up, Doc? It is hard to determine to whom [director Peter Bogdanovich] has done the greater disservice: to his author, by assuming he could bring him to the screen, or to his inamorata, by assuming he could get her to act. J ohn Simon would be the first to deride as cliché any description of his death as the end of an era. In fact, Simon was no more negative than most critics, but his lively writing style meant that his gibes were more memorable than those of the others. "Critic John Simon Hangs His Own Shingle on the Web", New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=John_Simon_(critic)&oldid=1000970257, 20th-century American non-fiction writers, 21st-century American non-fiction writers, United States Army personnel of World War II, Disease-related deaths in New York (state), People with acquired American citizenship, Wikipedia articles needing page number citations from November 2019, Pages using infobox military person with embed, Wikipedia articles with PLWABN identifiers, Wikipedia articles with SELIBR identifiers, Wikipedia articles with SNAC-ID identifiers, Wikipedia articles with SUDOC identifiers, Wikipedia articles with WORLDCATID identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, George Polk Award for Film Criticism (1968), American Academy of Arts and Letters award for Literature (1976), This page was last edited on 17 January 2021, at 16:43. Vote in the Movie Monster Showdown – Round 3, The 2021 Writers Guild Awards Winners: Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, Promising Young Woman, Ted Lasso Win Big, Godzilla vs. Kong First Reactions: An Epic Face-Off Worthy of Both Iconic Characters, 7 Ways Zack Snyder’s Justice League Sets Up An Abandoned DC Cinematic Universe, Sidney Poitier’s 7 Most Memorable Performances, All Harry Potter Movies Ranked Worst to Best by Tomatometer, Golden Tomato Awards: Best Movies & TV of 2020, (Photo Credit: Ron Galella/ Contributor/ [4][6], Simon penned theater, film, music, and book reviews for publications such as New York, Esquire, The Hudson Review, National Review, Opera News, The New Leader, Commonweal, The New Criterion and The New York Times Book Review. Confirms me in the belief that this gifted film maker is the sad victim of his supreme lack of discipline. It makes horror not a glamorous adventure, merely horrible and, worse yet, banal. Historical pageants may be fine for high-school graduation ceremonies, but since none of the performers in this film is likely to be your son or daughter, why bother with it? It took guts for a neophyte film maker still in his twenties to fire two cinematographers before a third gave him what he wanted; yet the result is seamlessly impeccable. If vacuity had any weight, you could kill an ox by dropping on it Michelangelo Antonioni's latest film, The Passenger. [3], By 1944, he was in a United States Army Air Forces basic training camp in Wichita Falls, Texas, and served until 1945. The complete film critic must be large; he must contain multitudes. Heaven help us if they don't: We may be headed for a very boring world indeed. [12], Simon died at Westchester Medical Center on November 24, 2019, at age 94, from complications of a stroke he suffered earlier that day while attending a dinner theater. Back in 1926, Virginia Woolf wrote that at the movies, "as smoke pours from Vesuvius, we should be able to see thought in its wildness, in its beauty, in its oddity..." The Paper Chase fails to make thought visible. [29], Writing about Simon after Simon's death, playwright and critic Jonathan Leaf said that defenders of Simon's work as a critic saw him as driven by a "dogged belief in artistic standards" while others disagreed. To debate such a film seems impossible: anyone who can find merit in this deluge of noise and nausea has nothing to say to me, nor I to him. The critic John Simon wrote that the close-ups in the film afforded Finlay the chance to give a more subtle and effective performance than he had on stage. It has that homemade, backyard look we encounter so frequently in low-budget films. Worst of all is the suspense plot, simplistic enough to be rather more laughable than the high-pitched, anile voice in which the bottle-nosed dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) shrills his truncated banalities. It was old-school Italian, with Upper East Side elegance and serenity. In Nashville, the sum of the parts is, unfortunately, greater than the whole, but, bit by bit, they are mostly well worth attending to. Just weeks before his death, aged 94, The Wall Street Journal profiled him under the headline “The Last Man of Letters”. A 1980 issue of Variety included an ad signed by 300 people decrying Simon's reviews as racist and vicious.[6][13]. John Simon is a vicious, gay hater who also takes … Speaking of John Simon, Roger Ebert later wrote about him in his memoir and did not really have anything kind to say about the fellow critic. The film's incidents... look and sound like improvisations in which a dreary little situation is stretched, worried, reiterated until any spectator with a sense of the value of his time must turn as blue in the face as the hero's collar. My objection is not so much to its amorality as to its untruthfulness and dishonesty. [5] Both of his parents became naturalized United States citizens in 1941. I can't wait until AIDS gets all of them! Write a review. His wife, Patricia Hoag Simon… By John Simon. The most stupid, arrogant, and tasteless movie since Russell's Mahler. "[20] Nevertheless, nearly a quarter of a century later, Simon gave an unqualified rave review to Hollywood Arms (2002), an autobiographical play which Burnett had co-written. Simon was most infamous as a theater reviewer, but I got to know him, as a writer and colleague, in the role of film critic, and something that strikes me … His enthusiasms were expressed with the same vigor—after heaping praise on the writing, acting, directing, and even the set designs of Doubt, for example, he described it as "a theatrical experience it would be sinful to miss." Its people look neither funny nor touching, neither monstrous nor human; they are mere lay figures tugged about aimlessly to fill out the space of the screen, the prescribed time for a major movie, and the leaky balloon of Fellini's ego. [17], In his memoir Life Itself, Roger Ebert wrote, "I feel repugnance for the critic John Simon, who made it a specialty to attack the way actors look. For a critic best remembered for his vituperation, it surprises that good reviews outweigh the bad. On Simon's dismissal from New York magazine, critic Richard Hornby argued in The Hudson Review: His removal seems to have been political, with a new editor-in-chief acceding to the usual pressure from theatrical producers to replace him with someone more positive. He was 94. J ohn Simon, a prominent art, film, and books critic, died on Sunday in Valhalla, New York. Simon was one of the most critical and widely criticized of … "[24], Simon has been identified as the inspiration for the title character of the acerbic and tormented culture critic in Wilfrid Sheed's novel Max Jamison,[25] and Simon expressed his displeasure whenever Sheed's book was reviewed without mentioning Simon's name. Strip Star Wars of its often striking images and its highfalutin scientific jargon, and you get a story, characters, and dialogue of overwhelming banality, without even a "future" cast to them: Human beings, anthropoids, or robots, you could probably find them all, more or less like that, in downtown Los Angeles today. Their movie is too schematic in its rote ups and downs, too predictable in its calculated alternation of drama and farce, and too whorish in its playing to the gallery. Forgot your password? He speaks at least 6 languages, and seems to have consumed most of the world's greatest fiction, poems, essays and plays. [4] He grew up in Belgrade before immigrating to the United States in 1941, aged 16, while on a tourist visa to join his father. Simon was most infamous as a theater reviewer, but I got to know him, as a writer and colleague, in the role of film critic, and something that strikes me … Better Vietnam Than Barbra Streisand JOHN SIMON June 1 1975. Strip away all that false pretension and you'll find the real pretension inside. [9] He also reviewed theater for The Westchester Guardian. Start your review of John Simon on Film: Criticism 1982-2001. In December 2015, when Simon was 90, during the week of the premiere of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, New York made the unusual move of republishing a review of the original 1977 Star Wars film by Simon, who blasted it: I sincerely hope that science and scientists differ from science fiction and its practitioners. John Simon, Self: The Odd Couple. Leaf also relayed reminiscences about Simon shared with Leaf by the critic Howard Kissel late in Kissel's life. John Simon, a legendary theater, film and literary critic who spent more than 50 years gaining a reputation for stinging reviews and lively prose at … I'm not in sympathy with where he's going. He grew up in Belgrade before immigrating to the United States in 1941, aged 16, on a tourist visa to join his parents. He does a great act, but read his actual reviews and you'll find that he uses intellectual scare tactics to … Two prominent English-language critics of the modern era, they wielded enormous influence in … View Article Pages. John Simmon was born in Subotica of Hungarian descent[3] to Joseph and Margaret (née Reves) Simmon. It is worth even less without some fresh insight into social and psychological problems. [23] Fonda and Keith Baxter do act a bit, but only just, and Helmut Berger doesn't even try, which seems to come naturally to him. Emptiness is everywhere: in landscapes and townscapes, churches and hotel rooms, and most of all in the script. It zigzags across our horizon like a bolt of fleshy lightning",[16] while Kathleen Turner is a "braying mantis". [15] Others have suggested that his negative criticism was mean-spirited, not constructive. [21], In 1973, Simon wrote an unfavorable review of the play Nellie Toole and Co.,[22] which featured actress Sylvia Miles, whom Simon referred to as "one of New York's leading party girls and gate-crashers". (Siskel died in 1998; Simon switched from New York magazine to Bloomberg News in 2005.) He has an incredible store of knowledge of literature, art, film history and especially language. First of all, Simon's career hasn't "ended"; according to the Wikipedia page that Christian and I linked to, Simon is still quite active, albeit as a THEATRE critic rather than a film critic. [10], Simon played himself in a 1975 television episode of The Odd Couple[11] and as a sort of parody of himself in a short film on Saturday Night Live in 1986. Upward Mobility: In this clip from May 3, 2006, renowned literary, theater and film critic John Simon discussed his approach to criticism and art with William Hoffman. They can't help how they look, any more than John Simon can help looking like a rat. Sidney Lumet has directed with remarkably little feeling for the Texas landscape and how people fit into it -- understandably, I suppose, since he is a New York City boy and a dependably uninspired director. "[1] Lynn Redgrave and John Clark were particularly happy with his review of Shakespeare for My Father, then about to debut on Broadway. The film treats its unusual occurrences casually, as if they were quite ordinary, which may be less artistic than taking the mundane and perceiving its extraordinary dimensions, but not bad, all the same. Patricia Hoag Simon, Simon’s wife, said her husband died Sunday night at Westchester Medical Center. Everything is absurd, but in a homey, relaxed way. [5] As a student, Simon was hired by playwright Lillian Hellman to prepare a translation of Jean Anouilh's The Lark, but he was reportedly only paid $50, half of the agreed amount, because, in his own words, he gave her fifty double-spaced pages but she had expected that many pages in single-space. John Simon, the theater and film critic known for his lacerating reviews and often withering assessment of performers' physical appearance, has died. Frank Finlay - Wikipedia ) John Simon felt it was "a regrettable failure, although not a total one. It is very much what a clever -- but not so very clever -- kid fresh out of film school and stuffed to the gills with Godard, Resnais, Robbe-Grillet, etc. Don't have an account? It was incredibly amusing to read this unrestrained bitchiness, but it did seem very unprofessional. Alongside the great literary tracts on love by writers like Stendhal, Kierkegaard, Ortega y Gasset, we must now place this cinematic treatise on married love -- indeed, on basic man-woman relations -- by the giant of Swedish and world film making. And it is very hard to evince even superficial sympathy for these characters. In addition, Bryan Garner referred to Simon as a language maven and credited him with improving the quality of American criticism.[28]. [30], "The Clothes Have No Emperor" by Paul Slansky, 1978 interview of John Simon by Mike Wallace, "John Simon, Wide-Ranging Critic With a Cutting Pen, Dies at 94", "Critic John Simon Hangs His Own Shingle on the Web", "Theatre Critic John Simon Has Passed Away at 94", "John Simon to Leave Long-Held Post at New York Magazine; McCarter Named New Critic", "Interviews: John Simon, The Art of Criticism No. It is like playing tennis not only without a net but also without a court, and with twenty balls simultaneously. Interviewed by Davi Napoleon for The Paris Review, Simon described a photo taken with producer Joseph Papp who had "his arm around me after I've given him a good review, and [asked] for the picture back the next month because of a bad review. The critic John Simon For years he was the meanest film and (especially) theater critic in New York, obsessing in his reviews about how physically unattractive actors were (especially Liza Minnelli, Barbra Streisand, and Wallace Shawn). It is not a brilliant script, and is not superlatively directed; but it is an honorably imaginative re-creation of a major political and human scandal, and it has throughout the aroma of verisimilitude. He amended his surname at some point to "Simon". The other is a mystery story that thickens into ever greater contrivance, improbability, and opacity.
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