“I began to realize that all of these films that I had loved in the
past could be taken seriously, that some real artistic claims
could be made for them. That was a revelation.”
Robin Wood

I don’t want too much more time to pass by without writing a few words about a man who passed away quietly in his Toronto home this past December 18th.

Robin Wood was a film critic at a time when being a film critic actually stood for something. Today, in our entertainment-obsessed culture, we have lots of people throwing their rotten tomatoes in newspapers, magazines and the Internet, but they’re just movie reviewers.

Robin Wood was no reviewer. He was a film critic. Like Peter Bogdanovich, Andrew Sarris, Pauline Kael, David Thomson, Richard Schickel, Molly Haskell, J. Hoberman and Richard Corliss, Wood belonged to generation of writers who believed that researching, studying, examining and writing about cinema was a pursuit well worth devoting a lifetime. Call it a devotion to an art form.

To Robin Wood, movies were not corporate-manufactured thrill park rides to be judged by the brightness of their stars, the colorfulness of their explosions or the ringing of their box office registers. Wood understood that film was an art form that was made up of every other art form (acting, writing, photography, painting, music) and that great artistry and great art could be found in movies that were designed to be pure entertainment.

Wood’s seminal 1965 book, Hitchcock’s Films, led the way. It made the case that director Alfred Hitchcock was more than merely the Master of Suspense; he was also a Master of Cinema. That book led to a major critical re-examination of Hitchcock’s work, elevating him from a technician with a talent for thrillers to the status of film artist that he enjoys today.

And whether Wood was writing reviews and essays for magazines like Cahiers du cinema, Film Comment, his own CineACTION! or writing monographs and books on filmmakers like Howard Hawks, Arthur Penn, Ingmar Bergman, he did so with a passion that was matched only by his own intellect and his skill at expressing that intellect with words on paper.

Back in my college days, Robin Wood was required reading for those of us majoring in Film Studies. He validated our love for movies like Hitchcock’s Vertigo and Hawks’ Rio Bravo by declaring them masterpieces, while helping us to find a way into films like Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali and Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’avventura.

If you’ve never read any of Wood’s work, a good entry point might be his Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan…and Beyond, a book of essays that includes a critical look of the films of Martin Scorsese, a political analysis of the movies of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas and a detailed examination of the work of Brian De Palma.

It’s old school film criticism from a giant in the field who won’t be writing any more of it.

Our loss.