Bosley Crowther - Film Criticism

Film Criticism

Crowther was a prolific writer of film essays as a critic for The New York Times from 1940 to 1967. Perhaps conscious of the power of his reviews, his style was considered by many to be scholarly rather than breezy. Frank Beaver wrote in Bosley Crowther: Social Critic of the Film, 1940-1967 that Crowther opposed displays of patriotism in films and believed that a movie producer "should balance his political attitudes even in the uncertain times of the 1940s and 1950s, during the House Un-American Activities Committee." Crowther's review of the wartime drama Mission to Moscow chided the film by saying it should show "less ecstasy", and said "It is just as ridiculous to pretend that Russia has been a paradise of purity as it is to say the same thing about ourselves."

In the 1950s, Crowther was an opponent of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, whose anti-Communist crusade targeted Hollywood and blacklisted alleged Hollywood Communists. He opposed censorship of movies, and advocated greater social responsibility in the making of movies. He was critical of movies that sensationalized violence, criticizing Bonnie and Clyde as "a blending of farce with brutal killings," "as pointless as it is lacking in taste." Crowther approved of movies with social content, such as Citizen Kane, The Grapes of Wrath, Gone With the Wind, The Lost Weekend, and All the King's Men. Crowther also had a barely concealed disdain for Joan Crawford when reviewing her films, referring to her acting style as "artificiality" and "pretentiousness", and would also chide Crawford for her physical bearing. In his review of the cult classic Johnny Guitar, Crowther complained that, "...no more femininity comes from (Crawford) than from the rugged Mr. Heflin in Shane. For the lady, as usual, is as sexless as the lions on the public library steps and as sharp and romantically forbidding as a package of unwrapped razor blades."

His preferences in popular movies were not always predictable. He defended epics such as Ben-Hur and Cleopatra, but gave the World War II film The Great Escape a highly unfavorable review, and panned all of David Lean's later works. He called Lawrence of Arabia a "thundering camel-opera that tends to run down rather badly as it rolls on into its third hour and gets involved with sullen disillusion and political deceit."

Crowther had a reputation for admiring foreign language films including many of the Italian neorealist films such as Open City, The Bicycle Thief, and Shoeshine. But too he was critical of some iconic releases. He found Kurosawa's classic Throne of Blood (derived from Macbeth) ludicrous, particularly its ending; and called Gojira (Godzilla) "an incredibly awful film". When Alfred Hitchcock released Psycho in 1960, Crowther dismissed the film as "a blot on an otherwise honorable career". He commented that while Satyajit Ray's Pather Panchali took on "a slim poetic form" the structure and tempo of it "would barely pass as a 'rough cut' with editors in Hollywood". Writing about L'Avventura in 1960, Crowther said that watching the film was "like trying to follow a showing of a picture at which several reels have got lost."

The career of Bosley Crowther is discussed at length in For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism, including his support for foreign-language cinema and his public repudiation of McCarthyism and the Blacklist. In this 2009 documentary film contemporary critics who appreciate his work, such as A.O. Scott appear, but also those who found his work to be too moralistic, such as Richard Schickel, Molly Haskell, and Andrew Sarris.