Stanley Kauffmann | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1916-04-24)April 24, 1916 New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Died | October 9, 2013(2013-10-09) (aged 97) New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Occupation(s) | Critic, editor, writer, educator |
| Spouse | |
Stanley Kauffmann (April 24, 1916 – October 9, 2013) was anAmerican writer, editor, and critic of film and theater.[1]
Kauffmann started withThe New Republic in 1958 and contributed film criticism to that magazine for the next 55 years, publishing his last review in 2013.[2][3] He had one brief break in hisNew Republic tenure,[4] when he served as the drama critic forThe New York Times for eight months in 1966.[5]
He worked as an acquisitions editor atBallantine Books in 1953, where he acquired the novelFahrenheit 451 byRay Bradbury.[6] Several years later, while working as an editor atAlfred A. Knopf in 1959 he discovered a manuscript byWalker Percy,The Moviegoer. Following a year of rewrites and revisions, the novel was published in 1961, and it won aNational Book Award in 1962.[7]
Stanley electrified educated people with the news that movies had become one of the high arts again, and that there were contemporary works—by Bergman, Truffaut, Antonioni, and many other directors—the equal of the masterpieces of the silent era.
Kauffmann was a long-time advocate and enthusiast of foreign film, helping to introduce and popularize in America the works of directors such asIngmar Bergman,François Truffaut,Claude Chabrol, andYasujirō Ozu.[8] He inspired and influenced younger film and cultural critics such asRoger Ebert[3] andDavid Denby.[8]
Kauffmann was also a professor of English, Drama, and Film at City University of New York (Hunter College, York College, and the Graduate Center) (1973–76) and taught at the Yale School of Drama.[when?][9]
Kauffmann was featured in the 2009 documentaryFor the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism where he was shown discussing the beginnings of film criticism in America, and noting the important contributions of poetVachel Lindsay, who grasped that "the arrival of film was an important moment in the history of human consciousness".[10]
Kauffmann is noted for his dissenting opinions on otherwise critically acclaimed films, giving negative reviews forBrazil,Star Wars,Raiders of the Lost Ark,The Godfather,Million Dollar Baby,Gone with the Wind,Becket,Taxi Driver,2001: A Space Odyssey andPulp Fiction, films that were heavily praised by other notable critics.
Kauffmann attendedDeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx and New York University, where he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1935, and he was an actor and stage manager with NYU's 1920s-30s revival of theWashington Square Players. Kauffmann married Laura Cohen in 1943, and they remained together until Cohen's death in 2012. They did not have children. Kauffmann died of pneumonia at St. Luke's Hospital in Manhattan on October 9, 2013, at age 97.[11]
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