Stanley Kauffmann, a staple in the film criticism community for the last half century, died early Wednesday morning in New York City due to pneumonia. He was 97.
Every week for the last 55 years — apart from a brief stint in 1966 when he was chief theater critic for the New York Times — movie lovers were treated to Kauffmann’s nuanced movie reviews in The New Republic.
Film critic David Thomson noted that in spite of Kauffmann’s age, “he wrote like a young man, or like someone capable of falling in love once a week as he discovered some fresh glory.” Thomson and other columnists are currently paying tribute to Kauffmann on an updated tribute page, currently on the New Republic’s website.
Vanity Fair‘s James Walcott said that Kauffmann, father of the term “the film generation,” introduced him to the directors that formed his appreciation of cinema. “None of us wins immortality, but Stanley Kauffmann came nearest.”
The son of a dentist, Kauffmann went to NYU to study acting and wrote plays before becoming a film critic.
Kauffmann married Laura Cohen, who died in 2012, in 1943. There are no immediate survivors.