Overview

Good film critics focus on quality issues instead of personal preferences. And they base their decisions on objective criteria. In Understanding Movies, Louis Giannetti describes three different approaches critics take to the study of film: realism, formalism, and autear. However, by quoting Pauline Kael, he acknowledges that "I believe that we respond most and best to work in any art form (and to other experience as well) if we are pluralistic, flexible, relative in our judgments, if we are eclectic.”"

Critical Approaches

To get a better idea about how film critics might approach their craft, we can consider how a critic might react to Sergei Eisenstein's Frauennot - Frauenglück (1930) [Misery and the Fortune of Women].

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