The Critic (1963 film)
The Critic is an American 1963 short animated film by director/producer Ernest Pintoff and creator/narrator Mel Brooks that won an Oscar for Short Subjects (Cartoons) in 1964.[1][2][3]
Background
The film was reportedly inspired by an actual incident. In 1962, Mel Brooks attended a screening of an animated short by Norman McLaren. It featured surrealistic, abstract imagery. During the screening of this short, Brooks overheard another audience member "mumbling to himself", an old immigrant man who was voicing his disappointment at the lack of a plot. Brooks was inspired to create a film out of this experience.[4]
Brooks contacted
Plot
Simple, abstract, geometric shapes move and morph on the screen to
The onscreen images feature geometric patterns. The "cranky and clueless" old man is trying to make sense of them, and describes what he sees at various points, including a squiggle, a fence, a cockroach.[4] The old man finds that certain images remind him of the biology classes of his Russian boyhood. When two abstract shapes approach each other and unite, the old man sees it as a mating sequence. "...They like each other. Sure. Lookit da sparks. Two things in love!... Could dis be the sex life of two things?" [8]
When the scene shifts from the "mating" to other abstract images, the old man gets bored. He proclaims the images must be symbolism, then adds that they are symbolic of junk.[8]
He eventually concludes that some of the images, depicting lips, are "dirty", obscene.[4][8][9] He admits at some point that he was looking for "a hot French picture", which he hoped would involve nudity. The implication is that the old man is in the wrong movie theater, probably one screening art films.[4]
He also wonders why the creator of the film wasted his time with this. He points that this creator could instead do something meaningful, like driving a truck, or do something constructive, like working in shoemaking.[9]
Analysis
Mel Brooks came to prominence as a performer by playing the
Brooks voices a character who is heard but not seen onscreen. He is unnamed, identified only as an old man from Russia.[10] The character is an audience member in a movie theater which is screening the film within a film. Said film is an experimental film, the product of avant-garde filmmaking. Clearly unfamiliar and unappreciative of such films, the old man delivers witty and insulting commentary.[10] Donald Weber points out that with his "contemptuous" common sense the old man unmasks the pretensions of art criticism.[9]
James Monaco suggests that the film approaches matters of film criticism in a humorous way. When the old man complains about the two dollars he paid to see this worthless film, he is touching on two subjects: what does the film audience get for the money they spend on a film; how can the "cinematic value" of a film be determined?[8] Monaco mentions the other film viewers, who seem to be enjoying the film within a film, which implies that there are subjective tastes when approaching a film, and consequently that the "cinematic value" is a matter of relative points of view.[8]
Release
The film debuted on 20 May 1963, at New York City's Sutton Theater, on Manhattan's East Side. The film benefited by being screened for weeks alongside a popular British comedy, Heavens Above! (1963).[4] The animated short received positive reviews by film critics, as a "spoof of the pseudo-art film". Positive reviews appeared in prominent newspapers such as The New York Times and the New York Herald Tribune.[4]
Reception
The film won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film[12] at the 36th Academy Awards.[13][4]
The film won a
The film won a West Germany film festival award.
Sources
- Jenkins, Henry (9 November 2012), "Mel Brooks, Vulgar Modernism, and Comic Remediation", in Horton, Andrew; Rapf, Joanna E. (eds.), A Companion to Film Comedy, ISBN 978-1-1183-2785-2
- Monaco, James (2009), "Film Theory:Form and Function", How to Read a Film:Movies, Media, and Beyond, ISBN 978-0-1997-5579-0
- Murphy, Kevin (2011), "Foreword: Riffing and You (and Riffing)", in Weiner, Robert G.; Barba, Shelley E. (eds.), In the Peanut Gallery with Mystery Science Theater 3000: Essays on Film, Fandom, Technology and the Culture of Riffing, ISBN 978-0-7864-8572-7
- Parish, James Robert (2008), "Becoming the Critic", It's Good to Be the King: The Seriously Funny Life of Mel Brooks, John Wiley & Sons, ISBN 978-0-4702-2526-4
- Symons, Alex (2012), "Adapting the 2000 Year Old Man, 1961-1983", Mel Brooks in the Cultural Industries: Survival and Prolonged Adaptation, ISBN 978-0-7486-6450-4
- Weber, Donald (2003), "Accents of the future: Jewish American popular culture", in Kramer, Michael P.; ISBN 978-0-5217-9699-6
See also
References
- ^ Shirley MacLaine presents Short Film Oscars® in 1964
- ^ 1964|Oscars.org
- ^ 'The Critic': Animation at Its Most Pretentious - Animation Obsessive
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Parish (2008), pp. 156-158
- ^ Flebus (six-minute animated work on youtube.com)
- ^ Jenkins (2013), p. 151
- ^ Internet Archive
- ^ a b c d e f Monaco (2009), pp. 434-435
- ^ a b c Weber (2003), p. 139
- ^ a b c d Symons (2012), unnumbered pages
- ^ Murphy (2011), pp. 1-2
- ^ "Cartoons Considered For the Academy Award – 1963 -". cartoonresearch.com.
- ^ Oscars. "Shirley MacLaine presents Short Film Oscars in 1964". youtube. Retrieved 6 August 2023.
- BAFTA