"Many French directors, having now realised there was no more real criticism, that the standards of the past have gone, are very offended about the quality of film criticism"
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Wenders is doing something sly here: he frames directors outrage not as a defense of cinema, but as the wounded pride of people who quietly benefited from criticism losing its teeth. The barb lands in the timing. These filmmakers only become “very offended” once they’ve “realised there was no more real criticism” - meaning the ecosystem has shifted from judgement to publicity, from argument to blurbs, from standards to vibes. It’s a complaint that contains its own indictment: if you truly believed in criticism, you’d miss it before it disappeared, not after it stops inconveniencing you.
The line also pokes at a peculiarly modern hypocrisy. Directors lament “the quality of film criticism” while accepting, even cultivating, the conditions that flatten it: press junkets, access journalism, festival economy, marketing-driven narratives, the pressure to be “supportive” of art rather than rigorous about it. Wenders’s phrasing suggests a feedback loop: when “the standards of the past have gone,” artists aren’t liberated so much as unmoored. Without a shared critical language, every work floats on personal branding and consensus manufacture. Then, ironically, the very people who wanted to be free of gatekeepers start craving the legitimacy those gatekeepers once provided.
As a director shaped by European art cinema and the era when critics could make or break reputations, Wenders is defending criticism as a serious craft, not a consumer guide. The sting is that he’s also diagnosing a cultural downgrade: when critique becomes content, artists lose an adversary worth respecting - and then mistake that absence for betrayal.
The line also pokes at a peculiarly modern hypocrisy. Directors lament “the quality of film criticism” while accepting, even cultivating, the conditions that flatten it: press junkets, access journalism, festival economy, marketing-driven narratives, the pressure to be “supportive” of art rather than rigorous about it. Wenders’s phrasing suggests a feedback loop: when “the standards of the past have gone,” artists aren’t liberated so much as unmoored. Without a shared critical language, every work floats on personal branding and consensus manufacture. Then, ironically, the very people who wanted to be free of gatekeepers start craving the legitimacy those gatekeepers once provided.
As a director shaped by European art cinema and the era when critics could make or break reputations, Wenders is defending criticism as a serious craft, not a consumer guide. The sting is that he’s also diagnosing a cultural downgrade: when critique becomes content, artists lose an adversary worth respecting - and then mistake that absence for betrayal.
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| Topic | Movie |
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