Eugene David<br>...The One-Minute Pundit

Posted 1:18 PM by Gene

Somebody named Metcalf has written a treatise on one of the greatest movies of all time, one which has gotten the likes of The Corner into a tiz, so it would be easy to ignore this key nugget in the whole shebang:

[The Searchers'] reputation lies elsewhere, with two influential and mutually reinforcing constituencies: critics whose careers emerged out of the rise of "film studies" as a discrete and self-respecting academic discipline, and the first generation of filmmakers—Scorsese and Schrader, but also Francis Ford Coppola, John Milius, and George Lucas—whose careers began in film school. The hosanna chorus for The Searchers is impossible to imagine, in other words, without the formalized presence of film in the university curriculum.

In short, a bunch of self-referencing self-absorbed eggheads praises a rotten movie, and goes on to make and praise rotten movies. This is news?

Another key nugget:

[S]uch encomia have the curious effect of making the movie sound dutiful and unpleasant, like a prostate exam.

Such encomia often do.

We have not seen The Searchers, and do not entirely trust JPOD, but despite the fact Pauline Kael and Thumbs-Up Ebert disliked it, we suspect maybe it isn't so good, even with the two Johns.