To the editors:
Like Pauline Kael’s negative publicity campaign against Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane (undoubtedly inspired by her failures in trying to make it as a Hollywood screenwriter), Rosenbaum criticizes Scorsese for being out of his element, saying he’s more at home with gangsters and filthy streets and inferring that he couldn’t possibly know of life among the upper classes by virtue of his background, as if one’s upbringing (or class) solely determined, or limited, the extent of his imagination. If filmmakers all followed this presumption, we wouldn’t have Citizen Kane, Children of Paradise, Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast, The Last Emperor, and all the other films that gave us a glimpse of Beauty thanks to the director’s ability to project himself into other realms of experience.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
I think what Rosenbaum is loath to accept is essentially Scorsese’s generosity, in that the film reaches an almost “virtual reality,” whereby Scorsese is literally inviting the entire moviegoing world to sit at sumptuous, luxurious tables and saying, “Mangia, mangia!” By the way, just why the hell is it whenever someone creates something really beautiful, or displays true talent, someone always has to trash it in some way? WHY?! Is it a jealousy thing? Well . . . so much for petty, unimaginative functionaries whose sole mission in life is to skeet shoot all truly great works of art.
