Evaluative judgements, negative reviews and ‘objective culture’: The critical reception of Woody Allen’s A Rainy Day in New York

With reference to 81 film reviews written by critics from the US, the UK, Australia, Ireland, India, Canada, Cyprus, China and Singapore, this article examines the critical reception of Woody Allen’s A Rainy Day in New York during a time when his private life was under renewed scrutiny. It contributes to cultural sociological debates on taste and aesthetic value by examining various dimensions of the critics’ evaluative judgements, drawing attention to field-specific aesthetic criteria, which refer to the state of play in the field of cinema, and ethical or value-oriented judgements, which have their origin beyond this field and refer to allegations against him. But the article does more than this: In adapting insights from Georg Simmel’s notion of objective culture, the analysis of the reviews, many of which are negative, alludes to a temporal dimen-sion, drawing attention to the aesthetic value that has accumulated to Allen’s work over the decades, deriving from institutional cultural capital, countless positive reviews and the utterances of fans. The article offers insights into the critical reception of the film in the moment and the longer game of aesthetic value accrual but also highlights the uncertain future of this body of aesthetic value, especially given the allegations against Allen.