The rollicking middle of the film, which revels in the sordid machinations of the Parisian gutter press, ranks right beside Howard Hawks’s “His Girl Friday” and Ron Howard’s “The Paper” among the most gleeful cinematic exposés of shameless newspapering. In barbed voiceover narration that sounds as much like Wolfe as Balzac, we learn how the game works. Papers are divided between the royalist press and the liberal opposition, but both sides agree that controversy is the supreme value, so all opinions are for sale. Observers of today’s integrity-challenged cultural criticism will nod with recognition. Though arts writing today is corrupted primarily by ideology rather than cash, in both eras flimsy or trite efforts are hailed as masterworks by those whose employability seems to depend on their willingness to toady to outside forces.
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