Roger Greenspun (December 16, 1929 – June 18, 2017) was an American journalist and

film critic Film criticism is the analysis and evaluation of films and the film medium. In general, film criticism can be divided into two categories: Academic criticism by film scholars, who study the composition of film theory and publish their findin ...

, best known for his work with ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'' in which he reviewed near 400 films, particularly in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and for '' Penthouse'' for which he was the film critic throughout much of the late 1970s and 1980s.

Biography

Greenspun was a member of the New York Film Critics Circle and in the mid-1970s served on the selection committee for the

New York Film Festival The New York Film Festival (NYFF) is a film festival held every fall in New York City, presented by Film at Lincoln Center. Founded in 1963 by Richard Roud and Amos Vogel with the support of Lincoln Center president William Schuman, NYFF i ...

. A graduate of

Yale Yale University is a private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, and one of the nine colonial colleges ch ...

(B.A., 1951; M.A., 1958) and an instructor in English at

Connecticut College Connecticut College (Conn) is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in New London, Connecticut. Originally chartered as Thames College, it was founded in 1911 as the state's only women's colle ...

from 1959 to 1962, he "began writing about film early in the Sixties, partly as a way of avoiding my Ph.D. dissertation, partly as a way of thinking about material that suddenly seemed as exciting as anything I had come across in English studies," he recalled. Greenspun was a professor of film history and criticism at

Rutgers University Rutgers University ( ), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a Public university, public land-grant research university consisting of three campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's C ...

from 1970 to 1995, as well as at the School of the Arts at

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

. Greenspun, who also contributed to '' Sight & Sound'', ''

Film Comment ''Film Comment'' is the official publication of Film at Lincoln Center. It features reviews and analysis of mainstream, art-house, and avant-garde filmmaking from around the world. Founded in 1962 and originally released as a quarterly, ''Film ...

'' and numerous other periodicals, published an article in 1974 describing the circumstances under which he left the ''Times'', where an editor had deemed his tastes or writing too "intellectual" or "esoteric" for the paper's readership. '' Variety'' noted at the time that while Greenspun was "one of the first (and still one of the few) mass-media reviewers to have emerged from the film quarterly underground," his interests in film were wide-ranging and he was ranked 4th out of 26 New York reviewers appraised in ''Variety'' for their accuracy in reflecting films' commercial success. Greenspun died on June 18, 2017, at the age of 87.

Bibliography

* Greenspun's short contributor biography mentions his reviews for the ''New York Times'' and ''Film Comment'', and his teaching at Rutgers University and Columbia University.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Greenspun, Roger 1929 births 2017 deaths American film critics People from Bridgeport, Connecticut Rutgers University faculty Columbia University faculty