The Death of the American Film Critic

The cancer of the salivary gland that has afflicted Roger Ebert, America's best-known film critic, is a personal tragedy. The illness has left him unable to speak and two years ago he was forced to withdraw from his long-running television show on which, with a sparring partner, he critiqued each week's movies.

The show was popular chiefly because of the way Ebert (right), who also reviews films for the Chicago Sun-Times, and his co-host - first Gene Siskel, later Richard Roeper - would bluntly approve or disapprove of each film they reviewed, with either a 'Thumbs Up' or 'Thumbs Down'. The picture of two 'Thumbs Up' became a much sought- after accolade that film companies would, if they could, include on a film's advertising. (Despite the crassness of the thumbs, Ebert is a serious and respected critic.)

But Ebert's illness is symbolic of a greater malaise afflicting the profession of film criticism in the United States. In just the last two years around 30 top film critics, many from leading newspapers and magazines, have been fired or retired.

They include David Ansen, chief film critic for Newsweek, Jack Matthews from the New York Daily News and Gene Seymour from New York Newsday, names well-known to American movie fans, especially in their home cities. Newspapers and magazines are cutting the space devoted to film reviews or running syndicated reviews from elsewhere.

The reason is plain enough: the internet, which is drastically eating into the circulation and profitability of newspapers and magazines in America. Young people have almost completely abandoned print as a way of getting news and analysis.

Anne Thompson, who writes for film trade paper Variety, says that the students who attend her film criticism class at the University of Southern California, "who are film-obsessed and hardly representative of their non-cinephile peers, can't name