Robert Sklar, RIP

I've written here before that a 1973 PBS series called Men Who Made the Movies, produced by critic Richard Schickel, really launched my interest in movies as something more than mere entertainment or time fillers. But pretty close behind was the book Movie-Made America by Robert Sklar, which was assigned by Professor Milton Plesur in a class I took my freshman year at the University of Buffalo called "Movies In America." The class was devoted to showing how movies were integrated with certain social and political themes that marked different eras of the twentieth century, and Sklar's book was masterful at demonstrating those connections. I've since used the updated version of the book in an Honors class I teach called "Movies as History," and I'd like to believe that students today still find it a compelling read. Anyway, I was sad to see that Robert Sklar passed away a couple days ago as a result of a bicycling accident. Over the years since I first read his book, I've looked for other of his work (especially in the magazine Cineaste) and always been rewarded with intelligent commentary that places the films covered into a broader context than is evident in most of the reviews found in most mainstream sources. There are too few critics who straddle the academic/popular divide as ably as Sklar did, and as a result, he will be missed by those of us who valued that perspective.