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There are movie critics, and then there is Manny Farber.

As an aspiring writer, I have had the good luck of having access to the writings of many gifted critics, who have made a huge impact on me. Andrew Sarris, J. Hoberman, Robin Wood, Molly Haskell, Jonathan Rosenbaum -- all of them invaluable in their own way.

I hate playing favorites, but it really wasn't until I read my first Farber piece that I knew that's what I wanted to do. The essay, to this day my favorite, was his seminal 1957 "Underground Films," an ode to tough, fuss-free Hollywood action directors, "the toughest, most authentic native talents."

The piece, celebrating "hack artists" such as Howard Hawks, William Wellman, Raoul Walsh and Anthony Mann, had me hooked from the very beginning. His sentences, filled to the brimming with pugnacious verbs, flew out of the page like pieces of shrapnel: reading Farber has the exhilarating effect of being reeled in seductively and punched in the stomach at the same time.

Inspiringly idiosyncratic, intricately muscular and mercilessly funny, his writing over the course of several decades has done possibly more than anybody else to turn film criticism into an art form of its own. Combative word by combative word, terse sentence by terse sentence, he has proven as formidable as he is inexhaustible.

A carpenter and a painter before picking up a pen in 1942 for The New Republic, Farber developed a highly distinctive style he took from publication to publication (Film Culture, Artforum, City Magazine and Film Comment, among others). From the beginning, he set himself apart from the run-of-the-mill reviewer.

With few exceptions, critics have come to judge movies according to a rigid set of values that would have plenty of elbow room on a pin's head -- Does the plot make sense? Are the characters believable? Are there enough explosions? Is everything neatly wrapped up by the end?

Not Farber. To read one of his pieces is to go down a foxhole, burrowing deep into a startlingly fecund and varied mind. A review is not a limited job, but just the beginning, a launch pad for the most mind- and eye-opening observations on art and life. The last thing he's interested in is in how many stars the movie is getting.

Though not as well-known as, say, Roger Ebert (mainly due to his shift in the past decades from writing to his original passion, painting), Farber's genius slashes far deeper. His status as a cult demigod among cinephiles has long cemented the Farber image: cranky, eccentric, scalpel-sharp and formalistically obsessed, like an unlikely progeny of critic James Agee and abstract painter Jackson Pollock.

This painterly side displays an unmatched attention to visuals that marks Farber, along with his wife (and, later on, his invaluable collaborator) Patricia Patterson, as a unique fusion of word and image. Farber's visual description of a scene -- his sense of film as an ever-shifting canvas -- is so potent that, frequently, I find the actual scene in the movie not being half as exciting.

Yet, despite his (deserved) status as the father of modern criticism, Farber's writing could hardly be called "classical." Unlike most reviewers, who gradually introduce a movie via plot synopsis, characters, etc., he starts already inside the film, zigzagging through it, leaving flurries of activity until landing on the acting of a bit player he likes, or a particularly incisive use of screen space. You have to catch up with him.

But who wouldn't want to? With his exquisite painter's eye and his elastic, shotgun-style prose, Farber is a movie buff's dream critic. Whether thrashing a highly-decorated A-list classic (on "The Best Year of Our Lives": "a horse-drawn truckload of liberal schmaltz") or praising an unpretentious, "termite" performance (on John Wayne: "a craggy face filled with bitterness, jealousy, a big body that idles luxuriantly"), he crams more piercing insight and pithy gusto into one paragraph than any other critic can claim in an entire review.

As opposed the (to my mind) overrated, late critic Pauline Kael, who flattered her readers with a snake-charming style that covered her lack of intellectual analysis like a cloak, Farber never panders to audiences. His work is rollicking, a tough, hilarious ride, but also steely in its artistic insights -- he brought endless curiosity and passion to difficult filmmakers someone like Kael wouldn't touch with a 10-foot pole (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Michael Snow, Chantal Akerman).

It's interesting to note that, although widely acknowledged as one of the greatest stylists in the field, critics rarely attempt to copy Farber's writing. There is no Farber School, possibly because his kind of blazing originality cannot be taught. Art is innate rather than learned, and Manny Farber is a major artist who just happens to write movie criticism.

Personal Anecdote: I got to briefly meet Farber when he came to receive an award at the San Francisco International Film Festival. A titan at 86, he was everything I expected him to be, and then some: august and playful, acerbic yet generous, patient and encouraging with this drooling fanboy. Just a truly lovely gentleman -- talking to him was one of the most tremendous moments of my life.

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