Flickread: Keepers: The Greatest Films-and Personal Favorites-of a Moviegoing Lifetime

By Richard Schickel

Former film critic for the magazines Life and more recently Time, Richard Schickel is also a prolific author, film historian and documentarian. Having penned twenty-four books on film and film history, Schickel's new book: Keepers: The Greatest Films-and Personal Favorites-of a Moviegoing Lifetime is a stimulating tour of 20th Century cinema, which includes reminiscences and reflections on movies that have moved him in his life. In a decade by decade review of significant films, directors and actors, Schickel also touches upon personal, movie-going experiences. Supplementing his views on cinema are his brushes with some of movie history's greatest talents, as well as his friendship with many notables, like Clint Eastwood and Martin Scorsese.

But the main attraction is Schickel's perspective on films and his assessments and reassessments of bodies of work, including both directors and actors.

Why should we care what Schickel thinks about film? Answer: his passion for cinema and his 40 years as one of the printed media's premier critics. Does he need more bona fides?

Keepers is prefaced with Schickel's speculation about the number of films he may have seen in his 82 years on the planet. The sum he arrives at is quite astonishing: 22,000. That number should impress even the most seasoned cinephiles (it certainly impresses me). His estimate is prompted by the question he is often asked: how many films do you think you've seen?
Schickel shares biographical information about his formative years in Milwaukee and his first film experience--Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. His father feared the 5 year-old Richard might be frightened by the evil witch but Schickel assures us his dad need not have fretted; he found the experience intoxicating. It seems many elder critics developed a love for cinema by way of a first encounter with a classic Disney film. Schickel says it was common for his mother to send him off alone to the cinema for a long afternoon with money for candy and popcorn. What would seem unseemly today was actually a safe practice then. Schickel is quick to remind us the theaters then were well staffed with ushers.

Though his love for film remained constant, it wasn't until the 1960s' that Schickel secured a position as film critic with Life Magazine. An editor asked him one day if he might write a critique, which lead to a full-time position as a reviewer. When Life went belly-up in the early 1970s, Schickel was recruited for the staff at Time magazine; a position he held until 2009.

Keepers might have--should have--been a two volume book. His book is concise but given his decade-by-decade survey of film and film movements, its svelte 284 pages isn't enough to encompass the decades from the 1960s' to the present. After the 70s', Schickel only touches upon a few films and directors in each subsequent decade. One could almost say the book is really an ode to the first 70 years of cinema. But in spite of the book's lean chapters, ample page space is always reserved for Schickel's favorite films.

A critic is only as interesting as his/her hyperbolic claims about who and what is the best, greatest, most significant, etc. Though Schickel isn't one of those critics who is ever sharpening an axe; like Pauline Kael, he nevertheless harbors his own adamantine convictions. On re-assessing the Marx Brothers:

They seemed to me have slipped down history's page in recent decades. Chico is never really funny with his lame Italian accent. Harpo works his mime pretty well, but his innocence wears less well. Groucho is, of course, the wiseguy supreme... ...They managed some sublime bits, but somehow our (maybe I should say "my") affection for them is now muted. The three of them do not add up to one great comedian, try as they might, and God knows they tried.

The statement appears in a chapter on the comics of the films of the first decades of the talkies; a period he expresses a singular affection for.

In the chapters prior to the talkies, Schickel offers a bracing comparison/contrast of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. Though Schickel expresses his admiration for Keaton, he finds it difficult to include any one of his films in his book, for various reasons.

Leaving no cinematic stone unturned, Schickel is keen to devote time and attention to foreign films of the period; powerful convictions intact:

On Fritz Lang:

I think both Metropolis and M are overrated, movies that are running now on their reputations rather than on re-engagement with their merits.

And on early Russian Cinema:

We were taught to revere the Russian cinema, and justifiably so. There was, at least in the films exported to the United States, an epic quality--and a technical skill--that was largely unmatched in our native cinema. Yet I don't particularly want to see those movies again.

Agree or disagree, it is difficult to be indifferent to Schickel's comments. One expects; nay, demands a critic have strong opinions. Thank goodness Schickel isn't timid. Though I myself am hardly simpatico with all his opinions, I expect someone who loves film to be opinionated and stand by their likes and dislikes. Schickel is no shrinking daisy.

Incidental or serendipitous encounters with Hollywood luminaries make for indispensable reading. Schickel regales the reader with a story about the time he found himself at a New York dinner gathering where Greta Garbo was an attendee. Having heard about Garbo's alleged reclusiveness, Schickel finds, to his and our surprise, that she socializes with a circle of friends. Though he acknowledges her shyness, he also finds she is quite talkative at the dinner table.

Further along in the book, Schickel reassesses Welles work. His sobering view of Welles' contribution to cinema could easily spark an all-night debate among film lovers:

Not wishing to take anything away from Kane, I'm inclined to judge directors by all their work, where Welles comes up short. Hawks, Hitchcock, Renoir, Bergman, De Sica, Ford and so on--their contributions to film history are far larger than those of Welles.

...But at the end of the day, I think the contributions of someone like Hawks or Hitchcock are more important than Citizen Kane.

Quite exciting and provocative comments, for sure.

The book glides from one period to the next, never overlooking the major movements or major stars; German Expressionism, Humphrey Bogart, Marlon Brando, Italian Neo-realism, et al. Through it all, we have Schickel's incisive thoughts to keep us mentally and emotionally engaged.

As he mentions his friendships with actors and filmmakers, it is hard not to think that his hobnobbing with the likes of Clint Eastwood or Bette Davis is a huge conflict of interest. Having mentioned his friendly dinners with Eastwood and their warm, mutual regard, how can Schickel then write a book about his friend with any degree of objectivity? How can we expect an impartial film review of Outlaw Josey Wales or Unforgiven? Somehow Schickel is able to remain critically detached. In recounting his friendship with Martin Scorsese, he talks about how he expressed his dislike for Mean Streets. In subsequent time together, Schickel says he and Scorsese were unable to ever have a "meeting of the minds" on the film.

He does express his high regard for Scorsese's other works and believes Raging Bull and Taxi Driver to be the director's masterpieces but doesn't include Goodfellas in his canon. Very interesting.

The book does become thinner as we edge ever closer to the 21st century. The 70s' earn more page time than the 80s', whose films rate a passing mention. Babette's Feast, Wings of Desire and Blue Velvet all garner Schickel's high esteem.

Schickel's book reminds me of last year's Not to Be Missed, by L.A. Times film critic Kenneth Turan, which earns a mention in Keepers. And like Turan's terrific book, Schickel's refreshingly sidesteps the tiresome, amateurish lists we so often find on Amazon and IMDB. Instead, we have intelligent writing and informed opinions and maybe most importantly; a sense of the critic's love for cinema.

Nowhere in Schickel's book is his love for movies better articulated than in the final paragraph:

Where the movies are concerned, I'm obviously a lifer. They haunt my reveries. I never had a choice in this matter. Movies dominate more of our dream space than we care to admit. There is no phenomenon that does so in quite the way they do. There are people who are impervious to them, of course. I am clearly not one of them. I do not expect to become one of them. I expect, in fact, to be going to a movie the day before I die. Why not? They are a harmless addiction. Except when they are not; then they are instructive in ways that can be wondrous. I am grateful to them--let's leave it at that.

Yeah, let's leave it at that.

Keepers: The Greatest Films-and Personal Favorites-of a Moviegoing Lifetime