Richard Corliss, the longtime film critic for Time magazine,
has died after suffering a major stroke last week, the magazine said Friday. He
was 71.
"He conveyed nothing so much as the sheer joy of
watching movies — and writing about them," Time theatre critic Richard
Zoglin said in an online tribute to Corliss. "He was a perceptive,
invaluable guide through three and a half decades of Hollywood films, stars and
trends."
In his 35 years as the magazine's film critic, Corliss wrote
more than 2,500 reviews and other articles.
Time Editor Nancy Gibbs called Corliss a master of the
written word. Words "were his tools, his toys, to the point that it felt
sometimes as though he had to write, like the rest of us breathe and eat and
sleep," she said.
"His prose was zestful and sparkling — it simply jumped
off the page," Zoglin said. He said Corliss had an encyclopedic knowledge of film and
its place in cinematic, cultural and American history.
His reviews were "authoritative but never
intimidating" and his tastes "populist but eclectic," ranging
from Chinese kung fu and Disney animation to films by Ingmar Bergman and Werner
Herzog.
Corliss also was the author of several books "Talking
Pictures" in 1974 was a survey of major Hollywood screenwriters. He also
wrote a monograph on Stanley Kubrick's Lolita and last year published a book on
iconic film mothers titled "Mom in the Movies."
His wife of more than 40 years, Mary Corliss is curator of
the Film Stills Archive at New York's Museum of Modern Art.
"Our tributes and a sampling of his writing from his 35
years at Time allow us to savour the immense range and excellence of his work
as one of the world's most important voices on film, and so many other
subjects," said Gibbs. "We will miss him terribly, and our prayers
are with his beloved wife Mary."
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