Notions of Good Cinema in the Critical Writings of Saulius Macaitis

Abstract

 Saulius Macaitis’ film criticism is analysed in this article as an exceptional phenomenon in Lithuanian cultural journalism during the Soviet era and the early years of independence. The article presents the personality of Saulius Macaitis, along with the context of Macaitis’ life, and examines the critic’s reception of cinema and his concept of good cinema (describing it not in terms of aesthetic criteria of cinematic art, but in terms of values). By using descriptive and discourse analysis methods, the study answers the following question: what values, according to Macaitis, make a film a good one? The study draws on the texts by Macaitis published in 1974–1992 in the periodicals Literatūra ir menas, Kinas, Kultūros barai, as well as his book dating back to 1990 25 seansai. Vienos kartos kino biografija [lt.25 Screenings. Cinema Biography of a Single Generation]. Since the career of Macaitis developed during the Soviet era, his early texts reflected ideological requirements. At the end of the late Soviet era, Macaitis critically assessed the Soviet system, acknowledged his own conformist attitude, and his misguided assessment of Western community. Despite the political context, the texts produced by Macaitis consistently expressed his concept of good cinema, based on the fulfilment of humanity and humanistic subtext. He criticized poor-quality commercials, formulaic films, while emphasizing the importance of meaningful content. As the political situation changed at the end of the Soviet era, the importance of multifaceted, unfabricated reality representations in cinema became apparent in the critic’s reception. and the neutral approach shown by Macaitis to the art of cinema was revealed in his uneven assessment of commercial cinema and his attention to the productions of various countries’ film markets.