Jonathan Rosenbaum

Jonathan Rosenbaum
Name	Jonathan Rosenbaum
Birth date	1943
Birth place	Florence, Alabama
Occupation	Film critic, Author, Programmer
Years active	1965–present
Notable works	Movie Guide, Moving Places, Placing Movies

Jonathan Rosenbaum is an American film critic, programmer, and author known for his iconoclastic reviews, encyclopedic knowledge of world cinema, and advocacy for overlooked filmmakers. He gained prominence through long tenure at the Chicago Reader and influential books and curatorial projects that challenged mainstream critical canons, promoting transnational cinema and experimental film. Rosenbaum's work intersects with major film institutions, festivals, and publications across North America and Europe.

Early life and education

Rosenbaum was born in Florence, Alabama in 1943 and raised in a Jewish family that later moved to Chicago, Illinois. He studied at The University of Chicago, where he engaged with film societies and student publications alongside contemporaries associated with New Left, Civil Rights Movement, and campus cultural debates. His early exposure to screening series at venues such as the Art Institute of Chicago and connections with figures from Black Panther Party-era activism informed an interest in cinema as social practice. After undergraduate studies he spent time in Paris and encountered programming at organizations like Cahiers du cinéma and the Cinémathèque Française.

Career and critical work

Rosenbaum's professional career began writing for alternative-weekly press, culminating in a long affiliation with the Chicago Reader from the late 1970s to the 2000s. He contributed criticism to publications including The New York Times, The Village Voice, Film Comment, Sight & Sound, and Cahiers du cinéma. Rosenbaum authored books such as Movie Guide, Moving Places, and Placing Movies that engaged with auteurs like Orson Welles, Jean-Luc Godard, Akira Kurosawa, Buster Keaton, Robert Bresson, Yasujiro Ozu, and John Ford. He championed filmmakers outside the Hollywood mainstream including Yvonne Rainer, Chris Marker, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Bela Tarr, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and Abbas Kiarostami. Rosenbaum also critiqued celebrated directors and institutions, juxtaposing the work of Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, and Ridley Scott against international cinema from Italy, Japan, France, Iran, and Hungary.

Film advocacy and programming

As a programmer and curator, Rosenbaum organized retrospectives and series at venues including the Museum of Modern Art, the Film Society of Lincoln Center, the Milwaukee Film Festival, and UCLA's film archive initiatives. He collaborated with international festivals such as the Cannes Film Festival, the Berlin International Film Festival, and the Venice International Film Festival to highlight restorations and rediscoveries: silent-era work by Buster Keaton and F.W. Murnau, avant-garde pieces by Luis Buñuel and D.W. Griffith, and lesser-known national cinemas from Argentina, Poland, and South Korea. His programming emphasized film preservation, often working with archives like the British Film Institute, the Cinémathèque québécoise, and the Library of Congress to mount prints and present context for directors such as Carl Theodor Dreyer, Satyajit Ray, Eisenstein, and Mikio Naruse.

Writing style and influence

Rosenbaum's prose blends didactic analysis with anecdote and polemic, drawing upon cinephiles, filmmakers, and critics—figures like Andrew Sarris, Pauline Kael, Andrew Britton, James Agee, and Andre Bazin—to situate films in broader artistic genealogies. He popularized comparative approaches, linking Italian neorealism practitioners such as Vittorio De Sica and Roberto Rossellini to contemporary auteurs and everyday cultural textures in works by Pedro Almodóvar and Wim Wenders. Rosenbaum's influence extends to academics, journalists, and curators; his dissenting takes prompted responses from writers at The New Yorker, National Review, and The Atlantic, and shaped syllabi at institutions including Harvard University, New York University, and UCLA film studies programs.

Personal views and controversies

Rosenbaum has been an outspoken critic of auteur-worship as practiced in some mainstream outlets, challenging the framing of directors like Stanley Kubrick and Orson Welles as untouchable geniuses. His disputes with other critics—most notably public debates involving Pauline Kael proponents and defenders of Roger Ebert—sparked controversy in periodicals such as Film Comment and The Village Voice. He has also commented on cultural politics around film distribution, taking positions on issues related to media conglomerates and festival selection politics at events like Sundance Film Festival and Toronto International Film Festival. Rosenbaum's forthrightness on political and aesthetic matters sometimes resulted in heated exchanges with filmmakers, distributors, and fellow critics.

Publications and selected filmography

Major books: Movie Guide (comprehensive review compendium), Moving Places (essays on modern cinema), Placing Movies (collections of criticism). He edited and contributed to anthologies alongside scholars and critics such as Noel Burch and Raymond Bellour. Selected essays and monographs cover directors including Orson Welles, Jean-Luc Godard, Michelangelo Antonioni, Federico Fellini, Ingmar Bergman, Greta Garbo, Charlie Chaplin, Ettore Scola, Tsai Ming-liang, and Aki Kaurismäki. Rosenbaum curated numerous film programs and wrote program notes for restorations of films like The Battleship Potemkin, The Rules of the Game, Tokyo Story, Breathless, and The 400 Blows.

Category:American film critics Category:Film curators Category:1943 births Category:People from Florence, Alabama