A special era

I was very pleased to see Peter Bart speak for those of us who were there in the 1970s when he opposed the snide, easy posturing of Manohla Dargis (Letters, Aug. 24).

I hope my own book of interviews, “Voices From the Set: The Film Heritage Interviews,” captured that special age when the Old Guard (Hitch and Hawks) were making their final movies and the New Guard (Scorsese et al) were investing movies with fresh personality and remarkable skill.

The interviews were from a Golden Age, a special time. No one who wasn’t involved can understand it. It was a time of great humanity, not just CGI effects and 10-word scripts. I wish Dargis had been there. If she had, there is no way she would have written what she did about movies in the 1970s. In fact, she would be embarrassed by her opinions.

Tony Macklin

Las Vegas

Tony Macklin founded Film Heritage, a critical journal on film, in 1965 and served as its editor until its close in 1978. He is currently a radio film critic based in Las Vegas.