https://www.sabzian.be/text/about-the-practice-of-critique

About the Practice of Critique

For some people of my generation, Serge Daney was the film critic who wrote passionately about films he had never seen, about fictive depictions of children he had never been, and who avoided beautiful images that only induce boredom. For years, Daney was admired as a leading critic of a time that no longer exists, the spokesman for a lineage of film writers who engaged with cinema with passion and conviction, with every fibre of their being; who did not shy away from rejecting auteur theory (the auteur, as Daney stated, has only ever served to deny class politics), from criticising idols of the Cahiers du cinéma (noting, at one point, that the latter had “a certain contempt for imagination”1 ), or from challenging the aesthetic status quo. Thanks to Daney, we could be stubborn, polemical, self-assured; we could even discuss films we hadn’t seen (starting with his emblematic text on the tracking shot in Gillo Pontecorvo’s Kapò), and we could end any debate by insisting that a given work wasn’t worth being watched — the right not to watch also being something that we learned from him. At the same time, on my side of the world, South America, Daney also helped us to discover films that would never be shown in cinemas anywhere on the continent, but which we could imagine and re-create from his writing.

In an interview conducted by Charles Tesson and Emmanuel Burdeau in 2000, Jean-Luc Godard remarked that Daney was one of the last film critics to make description a way of seeing (or re-seeing) a film, a dimension which has disappeared: “the film is no longer seen,” as he said.2 This way of interpreting film criticism as a magical or alchemical act, of creating a film from adjectives, details, phrases and emotions, was everywhere evident in Daney’s writing. Influenced by the “I”, by the defence of a political subjectivity, and by the connection between cinema and intimate, particular memories, he proposed a new kind of contact with films. A kind of contact based on his own recollections, which were also a form of aesthetic judgment, aligning with what David Bordwell has defended as the function of film criticism: to focus on evaluation and appreciation. In each text, whether short or long, whether focused on a film or not, Daney did just that: evaluated and appreciated. Yet all of us who confess admiration for his writings do not praise him for the value judgments themselves, but for how he positioned himself — for his tone, political strength, daring and drive, as well as his defence of the unbreakable bond between critic and spectator; a sensitive filiation which, as Godard noted, was already extinct by the early 21st century.

Daney’s magical gift was to be able to write in a way that projected the shapes of a film onto the reader’s mind. He could construct a value-based analysis centered on specific elements of a film, as in his texts on Francis Ford Coppola’s One from the Heart (on the trap of artifice); Catherine Breillat’s 36 Fillette (on the sense of provocation); and Eric Rohmer’s Conte de printemps). He also transported us to the fringes of red carpets in his festival coverage, especially of Cannes, while throwing us into films through their emotional, aesthetic and symbolic qualities. Daney ensured that criticism was not solely about the film itself, but about describing the spectator-critic’s experience in the theatre or even beyond it, in what one might call the expanded domain of a film, beyond its length, in the echoes that reverberate after the screening. “If the film is for me, I am for the film, in front of it and inside it”,3 he stated when speaking of a Rossellini film. And from this premise, Daney made us accomplices, siblings and voyeurs of his own experience. We didn’t read about cinema, but about films as seen through Daney’s eyes.

As a critic of a time now lost, Daney’s texts situated us in the role of the spectator —which in turn is also the role of the critic — who exists in two ways: “as an inert body among others and as a vivid gaze between shots”.4 His love for the interstices justified the existence of criticism, and it is in this imaginative gesture of Daney’s that we try to situate ourselves, demanding time for a film to mature in the body, through stupor, shock or tenderness, and invoking a form of critical writing ready to illuminate. In a 1974 text, Daney wrote that to be critical implied having the ability to specify the concrete ground on which one intervenes, adopting a position. And it is this place of the spectator-critic that Daney urges us not to lose, with our entire body, with our memory and with our personal sensitivity.

  • 1Serge Daney, “Le travelling de Kapò,” Trafic no. 4 (Autumn 1992).
  • 2Emmanuel Burdeau and Charles Tesson, “Avenir(s) du cinéma: Entretien avec Jean Luc Godard,” Cahiers  du  cinéma (November 2000), p. 42.
  • 3Serge Daney, L’Exercice a été profitable, Monsieur, P.O.L., 1993, p. 32.
  • 4Ibid., p. 32.

Image from Moonfleet (Fritz Lang, 1955)

ARTICLE
25.06.2025
EN
In Passage, Sabzian invites film critics, authors, filmmakers and spectators to send a text or fragment on cinema that left a lasting impression.
Pour Passage, Sabzian demande à des critiques de cinéma, auteurs, cinéastes et spectateurs un texte ou un fragment qui les a marqués.
In Passage vraagt Sabzian filmcritici, auteurs, filmmakers en toeschouwers naar een tekst of een fragment dat ooit een blijvende indruk op hen achterliet.
The Prisma section is a series of short reflections on cinema. A Prisma always has the same length – exactly 2000 characters – and is accompanied by one image. It is a short-distance exercise, a miniature text in which one detail or element is refracted into the spectrum of a larger idea or observation.
La rubrique Prisma est une série de courtes réflexions sur le cinéma. Tous les Prisma ont la même longueur – exactement 2000 caractères – et sont accompagnés d'une seule image. Exercices à courte distance, les Prisma consistent en un texte miniature dans lequel un détail ou élément se détache du spectre d'une penséée ou observation plus large.
De Prisma-rubriek is een reeks korte reflecties over cinema. Een Prisma heeft altijd dezelfde lengte – precies 2000 tekens – en wordt begeleid door één beeld. Een Prisma is een oefening op de korte afstand, een miniatuurtekst waarin één detail of element in het spectrum van een grotere gedachte of observatie breekt.
Jacques Tati once said, “I want the film to start the moment you leave the cinema.” A film fixes itself in your movements and your way of looking at things. After a Chaplin film, you catch yourself doing clumsy jumps, after a Rohmer it’s always summer, and the ghost of Akerman undeniably haunts the kitchen. In this feature, a Sabzian editor takes a film outside and discovers cross-connections between cinema and life.
Jacques Tati once said, “I want the film to start the moment you leave the cinema.” A film fixes itself in your movements and your way of looking at things. After a Chaplin film, you catch yourself doing clumsy jumps, after a Rohmer it’s always summer, and the ghost of Akerman undeniably haunts the kitchen. In this feature, a Sabzian editor takes a film outside and discovers cross-connections between cinema and life.
Jacques Tati zei ooit: “Ik wil dat de film begint op het moment dat je de cinemazaal verlaat.” Een film zet zich vast in je bewegingen en je manier van kijken. Na een film van Chaplin betrap je jezelf op klungelige sprongen, na een Rohmer is het altijd zomer en de geest van Chantal Akerman waart onomstotelijk rond in de keuken. In deze rubriek neemt een Sabzian-redactielid een film mee naar buiten en ontwaart kruisverbindingen tussen cinema en leven.

Related