Letter to a Young Cinephile

I said Monday that I would reprint a letter I sent Michael Gerardi, in response to his request from me last year in a note he called “film appreciation for a novice.” He said, in part:

I’m interested in learning more about film theory and appreciation so I can watch films with a more critical eye, but I really don’t have time to take a film appreciation class at Notre Dame because of my engineering curriculum … Can you recommend any books on film criticism that would be good guides for a novice, or another way to learn more about movies if that’s unadvisable?

Much of what I told him is, I think, of general applicability and perhaps thus of general interest if there are people here in the “budding cinephile” stage. For here, I edited out or made more generic some specific Between-Domer talk and added (in italics) a few sentences of things I wish I said the first time through. I decided against reprinting the letter, which is kinda long and, for many readers of this site, repeats stuff posted elsewhere and that’s kinda Level-I-ish. Instead, I’ll just link to my document site (recovered through cache in Sept. 07), though anyone who wishes to comment can only do so at this post.