Narrowing the Gap Between Academe and the World of Movies

By Robert Sklar

The global headquarters of cinematic glitz does not appear the likeliest place to locate an American film professor. But there I was at the Cannes Film Festival last month, and I went looking for other academics who, amidst the stars, producers, publicists, and paparazzi, were plying their trade as, pardon the expression, public intellectuals.

Elsewhere in the (film) world, to be sure, the practice of public intellectualism is not as oxymoronic as it sometimes appears in the United