Includes bibliographical references and index

1.The Birthing Pains of the First Professionals: Promotion and Distinction
2.Second-Wave Crises of Proximity and Distance: Relating to the Industry and the Audience
3.The Institutional Assertion of Authority: Sight and Sound and the Postwar Cinephile Challenge
4.From "I" to "We": Filmkritik and the Limits of Kracauerism in Postwar German Film Criticism
5.The Anxiety of Influence: The "Golden Age" of Criticism, the Rise of the TV Pundit, and the Memory of Pauline Kael
6.The Spectre of "Democratization" in the Digital Age.

Film criticism is in crisis. Bemoaning the current anarchy of Internet amateurs and the lack of authoritative critics in a time of laid-off film reporters, many journalists and scholars claim that cultural commentary has become dumbed down and fragmented in the digital age. Mattias Frey, arguing against this idea, examines the history of film discourse in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. He demonstrates that since its origins, film criticism has always found itself in crisis: the need to show critical authority and the anxieties over challenges to that authority have been long-standing concerns.