The 1966 movie that became Roger Ebert’s first review: “All good things have an end”
Roger Ebert’s career as a critic began with an undersung title.
While he wasn’t the first major film critic to connect with readers around the globe, Ebert turned writing about movies into a respectable profession and an art form of its own. He was deeply knowledgeable about film history and had a love for cinema from all over the world, yet he was also able to write in a forthright, plainspoken way that made it easy to discern his opinion. Ebert was able to see any film on its own level and could even make valiant points within a negative review.
He would win the Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 1975, the same year that he began co-hosting a movie review show with Gene Siskel, the Chicago Tribune critic. Although this show, which would have multiple names over the years, was quite popular and brought them a national spotlight, Ebert kept writing for the Chicago Sun-Times, where he had begun his career in 1967, and the first film he ever reviewed was Galia, a French drama from director Georges Lautner.
Ebert had been a major proponent of the French New Wave of the early ‘60s, which encompassed the inventive style of auteur filmmakers like Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Jacque Rivette, and Jacques Demy, among others. However, he found that Galia didn’t rise to the same standards.
Ebert was full of praise for the performances by Mireille Darc as Galia and Françoise Prévost as Nicole, a young woman who attempts suicide after learning that her husband has been unfaithful, but he didn’t think that the film stuck the landing with its ending.
“All good things have an end, and the last section of the film is given over to psychological hanky-panky à la Hitchcock,” Ebert said, “The abandoned wife, declared legally dead, gives Galia an opportunity to push her back into the river.”
His score of 2.5 out of four could be defined as a mixed one, as he found things to like about Galia without giving it a wholehearted recommendation. Nonetheless, one of Ebert’s strengths was writing in a way that made it clear that this was his opinion; someone could easily read his reviews and decide to see the film if they determined that they wouldn’t have the same issues that he had.
The thoughtfulness of Ebert’s review is notable, given that Galia hasn’t exactly stood the test of time. His early reviews are particularly important because they provide information about films that didn’t have IMDb, Letterboxd, and Rotten Tomatoes to collect details about them upon their debut. Ebert would often seek out smaller films for the sake of highlighting them, which is something that many contemporary critics haven’t been willing to do. It’s become more common to see ‘access criticism’, in which influencers are sent to screenings in place of critics in order to develop buzz on behalf of the studio.
It’s hard to say if Ebert would be disappointed by the way that criticism has evolved in the 60 years since he reviewed Galia. Many contemporary bloggers and film journalists don’t have an appreciation for films made before their lifetime, and often choose to write snarky comments in the place of actual reviews. Ebert may be gone, but his foresight and diligence are still a shining example of what great criticism can be.
