“During the ’40s and ’50s his jazzy movie commentaries were published in The Nation, The New Republic and Commentary. Wordplayful and alert to form, these essays struck readers attuned to Swing as a kind of literary Be-bop. He sang of undersung filmmakers like Howard Hawks and Don Siegel at the same time fledgling French critics Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard were doing same in Cahiers du Cinema.”