I belong to a small group of film scholars who have juggled two full-time careers: as professor (Ph.D. Columbia University) and as film critic. Over the years, I have taught film at Columbia University, the New School of Social Research, Wellesley College, Arizona State University, UCLA Film School, and visiting positions at Columbia Film School and most recently at NYU Cinema Studies.
As a film critic, I had a prominent voice at Variety (and Daily Variety), the bible of showbiz, for which I wrote throughout the 1990s, from 1990 to 2001. I then assumed the position of chief film critic for Screen International, which I left in 2003 in order to pursue more serious scholarship and to establish a commercial website, www.EmanuelLevy.com Cinema 24/7.
Over the past two decades, my film reviews and essays have appeared in a wide range of American and foreign-language publications, including the UK’s Financial Times, L.A. Times, N.Y. Times, Box Office Magazine, New Woman, The Advocate, Paste Magazine, Out, Arizona Republic, Phoenix New Times, Italy’s Ciak, Mexico’s Cinemania, and Israel’s Jerusalem Post, among others. Reflecting the schizophrenic nature of the film medium itself, as an art form and mass medium of entertainment, I have written in different styles for different publications, ranging from the most popular to the most academic and esoteric.
Books
My nine film books include: And the Winner Is: The History and Politics of the Academy Awards (1986);George Cukor, Master of Elegance: The Legendary Director and His Stars (William Morrow, 1994);
John Wayne: Prophet of the American Way Life (1988, paperback 1998)
Small-Town America in Film: The Fall and Decline of Community (1991);
All Abut Oscar; The History and Politics of the Academy Awards (2003, 11th edition)
Vincente Minnelli: Hollywood’s Dark Dreamer, the first biography of the legendary, Oscar-winning director (2009).
Cinema of Outsiders: The Rise of American Independent Film
Cinema of Outsiders, the first comprehensive chronicle of the American Independent Cinema, was published by NYU Press in hard cover in 1999 and in paperback in 2001. Highly acclaimed, the book, a finalist for the National Book Award, quickly became a textbook in over 40 film schools across the country. Still in press, the book is now in its 11th or 12th printing. Cinema of Outsiders was on the Best-Seller list of the L.A. Times for several weeks. In a recent survey of NYU Press, Cinema of Outsiders was selected as the most popular film book in the 100 year history of that prestigious press.
Citizen Sarris: American Film Critic
My tribute volume, Citizen Sarris, American Film Critic, a collection of essays by directors, scholars, and critics in honor of the distinguished Columbia professor and Village Voice critic, was published in 2001. Celebrating Andrew Sarris as a critic–and the book–in New York and Los Angeles (at the L.A. County Museum–courtesy of programmer Ian Birney) is one of the happiest and proudest moments of my career.
All About Oscar: History and Politics of the Academy Awards
All About Oscar: The History and Politics of the Academy Awards, was published in a new, expanded version in 2003 to commemorate Oscar’s 75th anniversary. First published in 1986 under the title of And the Winner Is, the book has been in print for 28 years and still going strong.
It has taken five years of research and writing to complete Vincente Minnelli: Hollywood’s Dark Dreamer (2009), the first biography of the legendary Broadway and Oscar-winning Hollywood director (An American in Paris, Gigi).
My latest book, Gay Directors/Gay Films? is my most ambitious and personal one, centering on five contemporary filmmakers: Pedro Almodovar, Terence Davies, Todd Haynes, Gus Van Sant, and John Waters. Though it is not about him, Gay Directors/Gay Films is my tribute to my late companion, the great Rob Remley, former Merce Cunningham dancer and New Line/Time Warner executive, who passed away in 2011. Columbia University Press, which had launched my writing career in 1980, published the book in 2015 in hardcover and paperback editions.
I have appeared on ABC’s Nightline, NPR, PBS, CNN, NBC, FOX TV, the Sundance Channel, and National Public Radio. Other related activities include participation in a number of documentaries and commentaries on several DVD editions, including Fellini’s City of Women and Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs. Of the numerous panels I have moderated at various international festivals, I am particularly proud of those dealing with the New Hollywood, the American Independent Cinema, Women in Film, Globalization Vs. National Cinemas, Politics and American Film in the post-9/11 era.
I am the only critic in the U.S. who belongs to eight critics groups: the National Society of Film Critics (NSFC); the Los Angeles Film Critics association (LAFCA), of which I was president from 1997 to 2000; the Broadcast Film Critics Association (BFCA); the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA, Golden Globes); the International Federation of Film Critics (Fipresci)l New York Film Critics On Line; On Line Film Critics Society.
I may be the only US critic who has served on 56 film festival juries, including San Francisco, Seattle, Vancouver, Dallas, and Palm Springs. Most recently, I was a member on the grand juries of the Montreal, Taormina, Locarno, Shanghai, and Venice International Film Festivals, and on the Fipresci jury at Cannes at its golden anniversary, in 1997, and then in 2007, and 2017. In 2003, as a member of the Dramatic Jury at Sundance, I was honored to be in the company of Tilda Swinton, Steve Buscemi, Forest Whitaker, and David O. Russell.
In 2004, I had the honor of serving on the Hawaii International Film Festival with two actors I admire: Maggie Cheung (“In the Mood for Love”) and Aussie David Wenham(“Lord of the Rings”). I had served on the grand jury of the Rome Film Festival with my colleague Michel Ciment of the French magazine Positif, and most recently on the 2018 Sofia Film Festival, Bulgaria.
To experience the joy of introducing films to live, often-young audiences, I have programmed film societies and festivals, among which I am particularly proud of the ASU Film Society, which showed a film every Friday throughout the 1990s. In 1999, I established and directed the Scottsdale Independent Film Festival, an operation that ran for three years and show highlights from Sundance as well as other indies, until I relocated to L.A. During that time, two major figures, Gena Rowlands and Robert Altman, received career achievement awards from the Scottsdale Council of the Arts.
Samuel Butler once observed that, “Every man’s work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture, is always a portrait of himself.” In that spirit, I hope that my lectures, scholarship, and criticism, though expressing personal and subjective voice, will also be relevant to viewers who love movies and want to know more about them.
