
Acting
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Born
1943-02-27 (83)
Place of birth
Florence, Alabama, USA
Known for
Acting
Credits
12 titles
Jonathan Rosenbaum (born February 27, 1943) is an American film critic and author. Rosenbaum was the head film critic for The Chicago Reader from 1987 to 2008. He has published and edited numerous books about cinema and has contributed to such notable film publications as Cahiers du cinéma and Film Comment. Regarding Rosenbaum, French New Wave director Jean-Luc Godard said, "I think there is a very good film critic in the United States today, a successor of James Agee, and that is Jonathan Rosenbaum. He's one of the best; we don't have writers like him in France today. He's like André Bazin."
Known for
7.1Jacques, a young man with artistic aspirations, spends four nights wandering Paris with a young woman, whom he rescued from suicide.
Four Nights of a Dreamer
1972
6.9Since the early days, Jerry Lewis—in the line of Chaplin, Keaton and Laurel—had the masses laughing with his visual gags, pantomime sketches and signature slapstick humor. Yet Lewis was far more than just a clown. He was also a groundbreaking filmmaker whose unquenchable curiosity led him to write, produce, stage and direct many of the films he appeared in, resulting in such adored classics as The Bellboy, The Ladies Man, The Errand Boy, and The Nutty Professor.
Jerry Lewis: The Man Behind the Clown
2016
7.5The surprising and entertaining life of renowned film critic and social commentator Roger Ebert (1942-2013): his early days as a freewheeling bachelor and Pulitzer Prize winner, his famously contentious partnership with Gene Siskel, his life-altering marriage, and his brave and transcendent battle with cancer.
Life Itself
2014
6.5The extraordinary life of Orson Welles (1915-85), an enigma of Hollywood, an irreducible independent creator: a musical prodigy, an excellent painter, a master of theater and radio, a modern Shakespeare, a magician who was always searching for a new trick to surprise his audience, a romantic and legendary figure who lived only for cinema.
Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles
2014
NRA “Cinéma, de notre temps” series episode directed by french filmmaker Jackie Raynal, originally aired 29 May 2016.
Reminiscences of Jonas Mekas
2016
7.2This film discusses the effect on how major American films in Hollywood were influenced by the Eastern European Jewish culture that most of the major movie moguls who controlled the studios shared. Through clips of various films, the filmmakers illustrate the dominant themes like that of the outsider, the outspoken American patriotism, and rooting for the underdog in society.
Hollywoodism: Jews, Movies and the American Dream
1998
Film credits
2020s · 2 titles
NRConstel·lació Portabella traces the exciting life of the great Catalan film director and artist Pere Portabella , which traverses the cultural and political history of the country and the last seventy years, letting us be carried away by the passion, the intellect intelligence and curiosity.
Constel·lació Portabella
2024
NR"This intimate saga links the filmmaker's long-lost family home in Tehran, a historic Frank Lloyd Wright house in Alabama, and the formative years of renowned film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum. Rosenbaum, son of a family of movie-theatre owners, grew up in the Wright house, now a museum. Documenting the home over a period of years, Saeed-Vafa finds parallels between Wright's design eccentricities and the twisting course of dysfunctional family histories." —Barbara Scharres
A House Is Not a Home: Wright or Wrong
2020
2010s · 5 titles
6.9Since the early days, Jerry Lewis—in the line of Chaplin, Keaton and Laurel—had the masses laughing with his visual gags, pantomime sketches and signature slapstick humor. Yet Lewis was far more than just a clown. He was also a groundbreaking filmmaker whose unquenchable curiosity led him to write, produce, stage and direct many of the films he appeared in, resulting in such adored classics as The Bellboy, The Ladies Man, The Errand Boy, and The Nutty Professor.
Jerry Lewis: The Man Behind the Clown
2016
7.5The surprising and entertaining life of renowned film critic and social commentator Roger Ebert (1942-2013): his early days as a freewheeling bachelor and Pulitzer Prize winner, his famously contentious partnership with Gene Siskel, his life-altering marriage, and his brave and transcendent battle with cancer.
Life Itself
2014
6.5The extraordinary life of Orson Welles (1915-85), an enigma of Hollywood, an irreducible independent creator: a musical prodigy, an excellent painter, a master of theater and radio, a modern Shakespeare, a magician who was always searching for a new trick to surprise his audience, a romantic and legendary figure who lived only for cinema.
Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles
2014
NRA “Cinéma, de notre temps” series episode directed by french filmmaker Jackie Raynal, originally aired 29 May 2016.
Reminiscences of Jonas Mekas
2016
A portrait of the influential American film critic.
Jonathan Rosenbaum, Present
2013
1970s · 2 titles
7.1Jacques, a young man with artistic aspirations, spends four nights wandering Paris with a young woman, whom he rescued from suicide.
Four Nights of a Dreamer
1972
An experimental short film that finds film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum playing himself, being interviewed about a film that doesn’t exist. Director Peter Bull proceeds to create the film that Rosenbaum describes. The alternating footage provides insight into these two different modes of representation.
The Two-Backed Beast, or The Critic Makes the Film
1978


