The criteria for judging movies which are presented here are based on the belief that film criticism becomes rational, if not "objective", when it displays and inspects the nature of its evidence and the bases of its arguments. The author dissents from the view of early film theorists that montage is the essence of cinema, and that cinema is to be judged by how well it uses that device. "I would wish the limits of my attack on montage theories to be clear. I claim only there is no special merit attaching to the use of editing devices as such, and nothing more cinematic or creative about these usages than about achievements in the significant use of lighting, dialogue, decor, gesture, or any other of the film-maker's resources. Equally there is no objection to the use of crude, single-meaning images as such. The cinema would be enormously the poorer if deprived of its loaded pistols, banana skins, ticking timebombs and dripping taps. Basic to the synthetic approach to movies which I believe most productive is the claim that significance, emotional or intellectual, arises rather from the creation of significant relationships than from the presentation of things significant in themselves." (Author/JK)