There’s no doubt that his interests cross-pollinate each other, and he must be maddening to academic grinds, because he’s so quick. In the film essays, he heads into the major theoretical issues, says what he has to say in a few glittering paragraphs, and moves on to the next thing that interests him—the differences between American and European films, the breakdown of film narrative, the comparative possibilities of opera and movies as total art works, and so on. In passing, he may tweak the grinds in the blandest of deadpan statements, such as “The recent efflorescence of theory is a reflex of the academic institutionalization of film studies. A knowledge of film theories can be imparted to students who have as yet seen too few films to be able to practise criticism.”

Coates’ applications of Freud and Marx sometimes suggest the eager graduate student, and a few of his sociological observations are rigid and lifeless. And novelists or scriptwriters who read him will be dismayed that he doesn’t treat the films’ source materials; after acknowledging the difficulty of ascribing credit, he sticks to the finished films. But he’s as clear and straight an analytic thinker as anyone I’ve ever read on movies, and, perhaps because he takes up many of the liveliest issues and the liveliest directors, he’s one of the most pleasurable theoretician-critics to read. There’s none of the kind of inflation that’s common in film books now; he doesn’t enshrine the artists, making a fetish of everything they’ve done. It’s elegant, pithy writing. I regret a certain highbrowism in his tone (and in his interests, too), and the title essay (the title is from E.T.A. Hoffmann) is a touch too labyrinthine for my taste.