The Great Movies III

My Man Godfrey ......................................... 269

Nanook of the North ...................................... 273

Order ................................................... 277

Out of the Past ........................................... 281

Pan's Labyrinth ........................................... 286

Paths of Glory ............................................290

The Phantom of the Opera .................................. 295

Pixote .................................................. 299

Playtime ................................................ 303

A Prairie Home Companion ................................. 307

Rebel Without a Cause ..................................... 311

The Red Shoes ............................................ 315

Ripley's Game ............................................ 319

The River (Le Fleuve) ...................................... 323

Rocco and His Brothers .................................... 327

Safety Last ............................................... 331

Samurai Rebellion ......................................... 335

Sansho the Bailiff ......................................... 339

Santa Sangre ............................................. 343

The Scarlet Empress ....................................... 347

Secrets &Lies ............................................ 351

The Shining .............................................. 355

The Terrorist ............................................. 359

The Thief of Bagdad ....................................... 363

Top Hat ................................................. 367

Triumph of the Will ....................................... 371

Vengeance Is Mine ........................................ 375

Waking Life ............................................. 379

Werckmeister Harmonies ................................... 383

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? .......................... 387

Withnail & I ............................................. 391

A Woman's Tale .......................................... 395

Woodstock .............................................. 399

WR-Mysteries of the Organism ............................. 403

A Year of the Quiet Sun .................................... 407

Yojimbo ................................................. 411

oger Ebert has won a readership paralleled by no other film critic in history. His devoted audience numbers in the tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands. A visit to the Commentary section of his blog shows that he has attracted articulate, thoughtful readers of all ages. They find his writing-not only his film writing but also his essays on humor, science, and spirituality-little short of inspiring.

His endurance alone offers lessons in courage. Despite health problems that would lead most people to retirement, he has simply revved up. Apart from his usual reviewing, his attendance at film festivals and symposia, his coordination of an annual film festival, and globetrotting that would exhaust a youngster, he has managed to turn out another suite of essays on film classics-The Great Movies III.

Quantity isn't all. You can argue that since his illness, Ebert's writing has become even more relaxed, conversational, and brilliant. We are, I think it's clear, watching a writer at the peak of his powers. But what accounts for his indelible appeal? I'd argue that he has become something unique: a "man of letters" whose voice comes from the world of cinema.

I apologize for the gender solecism, but "person of letters" sounds forced, and "litterateur" is too stiff. Traditionally, the man of letters was neither academic nor journalist. He was a deeply informed essayist, one who stepped back from the passions of the moment to understand, through his humane knowledge, the deeper impulses coursing through culture. Prototypically, this sort of intellectual came from the literary arts, as Hazlitt and De Quincy did, but Pater, Ruskin, and other critics furnish parallels in the visual arts, and of course we have Shaw on music and drama. In modern times, I'd add Dwight Macdonald and Lionel Trilling. The calling isn't only masculine: we need think only of Susan Sontag and Angela Carter.

Ebert is the first "man of letters" I can think of whose insight is distilled not from book culture but from the most important art medium of the twentieth century. His ideas are steeped in cinema. Just as the traditional man of letters saw the world through the prism of book culture, Roger reflects on religion, history, and human relationships by means of what cinema has shown him of human life.