If you think an editor twisted your words to such an extent that the editorial no longer represents your intended meaning, you can withdraw it. It happens all the time. Hell, I even withdrew a letter to the editor from my local paper after the editor decided to cut out the more vituperative stuff about my (really really terrible) congressperson.
But honestly Rosenbaum has plenty of opportunities to stretch out and write at greater length about Bergman or anything else at greater length, if he wanted to do so. I'm sure any of the major film magazines would publish a longer piece by him if it was timely and/or interesting. But Rosenbaum either has chosen not to write longer essays or is no longer capable of doing so. His criticism these days largely consists of his "Global Discoveries" column in
CinemaScope, which is just a series of stray observations about movies motivated by whatever he's watched at home over he past few months; occasional social-media posts of the kind that got him in trouble recently; and sometimes slightly revised versions of old pieces he posts on his website. So the idea that the
Times did him a disservice by chipping away at his brilliant critique of Bergman until it was the husk of an argument rings a little false to me. All he seems capable of these days, alas, are these brief sorties. That wouldn't be so regrettable if he hadn't proved himself, in an earlier era, capable of better-than-decent writing on film (I think domino is being unfairly dismissive here; has he read any of Rosenbaum's books? they all have good stuff in them).
And anyway, Bordwell already
critiqued Rosenbaum's
Times piece in a way I think is fairly definitive. I'll quote the relevant passage at length:
David Bordwell wrote:More importantly, Jonathan’s critique is so glancing and elliptical that we can scarcely judge it as right or wrong. A few instances:
*Bergman’s movies aren’t “filmic expressions.” There’s no opportunity in an Op-Ed piece for Jonathan to explain what his conception of filmic expression is. Is he reviving the old idea of cinematic specificity—a kind of essence of cinema that good movies manifest? As opposed to theatrical cinema? I’ve argued elsewhere on this site that we should probably be pluralistic about all the possibilities of the medium.
*Bergman was reluctant to challenge “conventional film-going habits.” Why is that bad? Why is challenging them good? No time to explain, must move on….
*Bergman didn’t follow Dreyer in experimenting with space, or Bresson in experimenting with performance. Not more than .0001 % of Times readers have the faintest idea what Jonathan is talking about here. He would need to explain what he takes to be Dreyer’s experiments with space and Bresson’s experiments with performance.
In his reply to Roger Ebert, Jonathan has kindly referenced a book of mine, where I make the case that Dreyer experimented with cinematic space (and time). Right: I wrote a book. It takes a book to make such a case. It would take a book to explain and back up in an intellectually satisfying way the charges that Jonathan makes.
Popular journalism doesn’t allow you to cite sources, counterpose arguments, develop subtle cases. No time! No space! No room for specialized explanations that might mystify ordinary readers! So when the critic proposes a controversial idea, he has to be brief, blunt, and absolute. If pressed, and still under the pressure of time and column inches, he will wave us toward other writers, appeal to intuition and authority, say that a broadside is really just aimed to get us thinking and talking. But what have we gained by sprays of soundbites? Provocations are always welcome, but if they really aim to change our thinking, somebody has to work them through.
It's worth clarifying that Bordwell is no major Bergman fan (nor much of a fan of the other big midcentury auteurs like Antonioni and Fellini). So his criticism of Rosenbaum's piece isn't motivated by the desire to defend his cherished object of cinephilic love, but rather by his objection to the kind of hit-and-run discourse it exemplifies.
The question becomes -- if the sort of arguments Rosenbaum was alluding to in his op-ed required much greater length to explicate, much less thoroughly support, why bother publishing it in the first place? From the
Times's point of view, the answer is obvious: more clicks (even or especially if they are hate-clicks). For Rosenbaum? An opportunity to sock it to the Bergmanphiles one last time? A chance to appear in the Grey Lady? I dunno....