| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 89.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 89.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

It's Only a Movie!: Films and Critics in American Culture. By Raymond J. Haberski Jr. (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2001. x, 249 pp. $27.50, ISBN 0-8131-2193-0.)

Film critics emerged around 1900, discussing the form's merit and its influence on the public. A smaller group debated whether motion pictures constituted a viable art form. The critic's role in the success or failure of films is the subject of Raymond J. Haberski Jr.'s survey of American film criticism. Sparked by lamentations of recent film critics concerning the dearth of "good films" in theaters, Haberski argues that what rankles them is the decline of their "cultural authority." Because contemporary critics sit appalled by the general public's lurid tastes, Haberski examined the film critic's role over time. Through a series of case studies he discovered that current critics often echo the protests and praise of earlier cultural critics. (One of the most interesting concerns Theodore Dreiser's antipathy for movies and the film industry. Dreiser, who considered himself a good socialist, hated a medium that appealed to the masses.) . . .

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