Richard Schickel
Posted: Mon Feb 20, 2017 1:44 pm
http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries ... story.html
So Richard Schickel croaked............aw darn.
"Father of American Film criticism".......really? Mordaunt Hall, Bosley Crowther, hell, even James Agee, but Schickel? A generation or two too late, and besides, being a "father" of American Film Criticism ain't much to brag about when most critics never had mothers anyway.
The great thing about when a critic passes is that their words become completely meaningless and forgettable even moreso than when they were alive. Schickel was an especial idiot when still walking the planet:
"He took on other classics as well, describing “The Best Years of Our Lives” (1946) as “close to travesty” and “The Maltese Falcon” (1941) as “cramped and static.”"
Need we say more?
His biographies were as joke even when first printed, Harold Lloyd, Walt Disney, D.W. Griffith? Poorly researched, rife with errors, and the first two especially written in a condescending, mean-spirited tone that implied the biographer was above the subjects he was writing about. Like Schickel had any accomplishments that even came to street level under the feet of those subjects. Remember, critics are the eunuchs at the Gang Bang; they can watch, they can comment, they couldn't do it if they tried.
Then, in his later-life reviews of other silent film books for the LA Times, Schickel would bemoan the tomes that he felt were written about topics no one cared about by film nerds who cared too much about said unimportant (to him) topics. I never forgave him for an especially petty, incorrect and uninformed trash review of David Kiehn's Essanay book in this manner, a book that was better and more worthwhile than everything Schickel ever wrote.
So condolences to his family, but no kind words for him, he is now just that much more easy to ignore.
RICHARD M ROBERTS
So Richard Schickel croaked............aw darn.
"Father of American Film criticism".......really? Mordaunt Hall, Bosley Crowther, hell, even James Agee, but Schickel? A generation or two too late, and besides, being a "father" of American Film Criticism ain't much to brag about when most critics never had mothers anyway.
The great thing about when a critic passes is that their words become completely meaningless and forgettable even moreso than when they were alive. Schickel was an especial idiot when still walking the planet:
"He took on other classics as well, describing “The Best Years of Our Lives” (1946) as “close to travesty” and “The Maltese Falcon” (1941) as “cramped and static.”"
Need we say more?
His biographies were as joke even when first printed, Harold Lloyd, Walt Disney, D.W. Griffith? Poorly researched, rife with errors, and the first two especially written in a condescending, mean-spirited tone that implied the biographer was above the subjects he was writing about. Like Schickel had any accomplishments that even came to street level under the feet of those subjects. Remember, critics are the eunuchs at the Gang Bang; they can watch, they can comment, they couldn't do it if they tried.
Then, in his later-life reviews of other silent film books for the LA Times, Schickel would bemoan the tomes that he felt were written about topics no one cared about by film nerds who cared too much about said unimportant (to him) topics. I never forgave him for an especially petty, incorrect and uninformed trash review of David Kiehn's Essanay book in this manner, a book that was better and more worthwhile than everything Schickel ever wrote.
So condolences to his family, but no kind words for him, he is now just that much more easy to ignore.
RICHARD M ROBERTS