Richard Brody — LLMpedia

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Richard Brody

Richard Brody is an American film critic and staff writer known for his long tenure at The New Yorker and for chronicling twentieth- and twenty-first-century cinema. He is noted for prolific criticism that situates films within the histories of directors such as Alfred Hitchcock, Akira Kurosawa, Jean-Luc Godard, Orson Welles, and Ingmar Bergman, and for engaging with publications and institutions including Film Comment, Cahiers du cinéma, and the Museum of Modern Art. His work bridges the worlds of film criticism, festival programming, and scholarly discussion at venues like the Telluride Film Festival, Cannes Film Festival, and Sundance Film Festival.

Early life and education

Brody was born in 1958 and grew up amid the cultural milieus of the United States in the late twentieth century. He studied literature and film during formative years that overlapped with the postwar critical reassessments embodied by figures such as André Bazin, Sergei Eisenstein, Vittorio De Sica, and François Truffaut. His education included engagement with university film programs and archival resources at institutions like Columbia University, the New York Public Library, and the Library of Congress, fostering an orientation toward cinephile histories and archival restoration movements associated with the National Film Preservation Board and the Criterion Collection.

Brody began publishing reviews and essays in journals and magazines aligned with cinephilia, contributing to outlets such as The New York Times, Sight & Sound, Film Comment, and eventually joining The New Yorker staff. His career has encompassed festival criticism at events like Cannes Film Festival, Venice Film Festival, and Telluride Film Festival, programming collaborations with museums including the Museum of Modern Art, and participation in retrospectives dedicated to auteurs such as John Ford, Howard Hawks, Billy Wilder, Yasujiro Ozu, and Robert Bresson. He has written extensively about contemporary filmmakers including Wes Anderson, Paul Thomas Anderson, David Lynch, Martin Scorsese, and Quentin Tarantino, and about international figures such as Pedro Almodóvar, Bong Joon-ho, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Ken Loach, and Pedro Costa.

Brody’s criticism is characterized by close textual analysis, historical contextualization, and a persistent cinephile lexicon that references scholars and critics like Andrew Sarris, Pauline Kael, Laura Mulvey, Tom Gunning, and Nicholas Ray. He often frames films within movements and traditions associated with Italian Neorealism, French New Wave, German Expressionism, and Japanese New Wave, drawing connections to directors such as Roberto Rossellini, Jean Renoir, Fritz Lang, and Yasujiro Ozu. His influence extends through mentorship of younger critics writing for outlets like The Village Voice, The Atlantic, and Slate, and through participation in public conversations alongside curators from the Film Society of Lincoln Center and scholars from universities including Yale University and New York University.

Brody is the author of a full-length study, "Everything Is Cinema," which offers an extended profile of Jean-Luc Godard and places Godard in relation to figures such as Georges Méliès, Max Ophüls, Robert Bresson, and François Truffaut. He has contributed essays and long-form criticism to The New Yorker, survey pieces for Sight & Sound and Film Comment, and program notes for restorations released by the Criterion Collection and screenings at the Museum of Modern Art. His archival essays have illuminated works by Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Miklós Jancsó, Satyajit Ray, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

Brody’s writing has been acknowledged by organizations involved in film scholarship and criticism, including citations and invitations from the National Society of Film Critics, the Online Film Critics Society, and film festivals like Telluride Film Festival and NewFest. His essays and curated programs have been featured in lists and retrospectives promoted by institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art, the British Film Institute, and the Cinematic Arts Foundation, and his books have been reviewed in major publications including The New York Times Book Review, Los Angeles Times, and The Guardian.

Brody resides in New York City and remains publicly engaged in debates about film history, preservation, and criticism alongside contemporaries like A.O. Scott, J. Hoberman, Richard Peña, Mark Harris, and Terrence Rafferty. He has voiced positions on issues such as restoration ethics, the role of streaming platforms represented by companies like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, and the cultural significance of repertory programming promoted by the Criterion Collection and Film Forum. His network includes critics, programmers, and scholars affiliated with institutions such as New York University, Princeton University, Harvard University, and the University of California, Los Angeles.

Category:American film critics Category:The New Yorker people