Quite by chance, in August 2010, I read an article in The New Yorker (on its website, that is) by Richard Brody called "Truffaut's Last Interview", reprinting an interview with a seriously ill Truffaut (he died soon after from a brain tumor) purportedly conducted by Bert Cardullo. An observant reader left a comment mentioning the coincidence of the wording in the interviews with material included on the Criterion DVD of The 400 Blows. Since I had the DVD with me, I checked them for similarities and published my discoveries on this blog in October 2010, "Francois and Bert, Parts I & II".
When I brought this to the attention of Gary Morris, who had co-edited the book of interviews with Cardullo, he forwarded my articles, including one I wrote in 2006 for Senses of Cinema which I then republished concerning the first instance of plagiarism from Cardullo that I discovered, to Richard Brody, who discovered even further examples of Cardullo's plagiarizing and published them in another article, "About Truffaut's Last Interview".
This inspired further revelations from other readers, and what I believed, and perhaps hoped, would be my last word on the subject, "An Unravelling" in December 2010. That article inspired yet further comments from readers, including two from just last week, that I have decided to reprint below - if only to get them more out in the open.
Since I am presently living in the Sticks (provincial Philippines), I am in no position to verify any of the claims made. I therefore present them without any editorial caveats. I leave it to someone in a better position than I to assist me in this rather important process. I take the charge of plagiarism very seriously. Even with incontrovertible evidence of it, I try to be careful with the word. After reading from all the links I included here, some might agree that we have been too careful with Bert Cardullo.
Anonymous said...
This is indeed not the only plagiarism that Cardullo has undertaken. The introduction (which he "wrote") to Theater of the Avant Garde, a book he coedited with Robert Knopf, has whole passages in it directly out of Christopher Innes's Avant Garde Theatre. It's so disappointing to look at a career that prolific and realize it is built on theft.
November 17, 2010
Jerry White said...
I read what you wrote in Senses of Cinema, largely because I had read and enjoyed Cardullo's writing. I found what you wrote there sad; I suppose a more intense emotion was probably called for. Anyway, I wonder if you have seen this, specifically the first blurb there: http://goo.gl/NfnPH
December 17, 2010
Dan Harper said...
I suppose the less intense emotion you felt when you read my article is a general one, but I suspect that the cat may finally be out of the bag for Cardullo.
December 17, 2010
Jerry White said...
Well, I think you oughta see this. These are the blurbs on the publisher website for his new book, Screen Writings, published in March 2010:
'Among my contemporaries, the best film critic writing in English in America is Bert Cardullo, and 'Screen Writings' proves why.' Dan Harper, American film scholar
'A lot of what Bert Cardullo has to say about contemporary world cinema would be interesting to a very wide audience. He is someone with an impressive and stimulating command of the difficult dance of the film review.' Jerry White, University of Alberta
'Bert Cardullo's articles and reviews are invariably intelligent, original, and highly informed. I have been a sturdy admirer of his work for years; he's a solid writer and an equally solid judge.' Frederick Morgan, American poet
The full link is at http://www.anthempress.com/index.php/subject-areas/browse-by-type/anthem-monograph-edited-volume/screen-writings-1.html
December 18, 2010
Dan Harper said...
That blurb is also on the Amazon page. Just shows you how a favorable blurb can be extracted from even a negative review (mine was as favorable as I could make it, under the circumstances).
The late Fred Morgan gave Cardullo a job at The Hudson Review in the '80s. It's a mercy that he isn't around any more to see what a mess Cardullo has made of his trust.
But I'm beginning to believe that Cardullo would have to commit murder before anyone else would notice how much "borrowing" (I'm in a generous mood) he's been doing over the years.
Thanks for the link.
December 19, 2010
Anonymous said...
Pages 70-72 and pages 85-86 of Cardullo's "Vittorio De Sica" are plagiarized from Stanley Kauffmann's reviews of "Two Women" and "A Brief Vacation" in "The New Republic" (May 22, 1961 and March 8, 1975 issues). Several sentences are lifted verbatim; Kauffmann's reviews are not quoted, cited, or acknowledged as sources.
Pages 56-58 and page 195 of Cardullo's book "Waves from the East" are lifted directly from Kauffmann's "New Republic" reviews of "Turtles Can Fly" and "What Time is it There?" (March 7, 2005 and February 4, 2002 issues).
Cardullo's two-volume "Screen Writings" is replete with plagiarisms from Kauffmann's old reviews. In Volume 1: pages 94-98 are stolen from the reviews of Olmi's films "The Sound of Trumpets" and "The Fiances" in the August 17, 1963 and February 15, 1964 issues of "The New Republic"; and pages 198-199 are taken almost vebatim from Kauffmann's review of "The Last Picture Show" in the October 16, 1971 issue of "The New Republic". In Volume 2: large portions of pages 16-21 are stolen from Kauffmann's reviews of "The Goodbye Girl" and "Manhattan" in the December 17, 1977 and May 19, 1979 issues of "The New Republic"; and pages 36-46 include several paragraphs Cardullo lifted from Kauffmann's reviews of "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" and "Me You and Everyone We Know" (April 5, 2005 and July 11/18, 2005 issues of "The New Republic").
Cardullo's "The Films of Robert Bresson" includes an essay ("Dostoyevskian Surge, Bressonian Spirit") in which he plagiarizes virtually all of Kauffmann's review of "L'Argent" (April 16, 1984 issue of "The New Republic").
Cardullo's "Screening the Stage" is filled with plagiarisms: pages 47-49 are taken from Kauffmann's review of "Betrayal" (February 28, 1983 issue of "The New Republic"); and a large portion of the essay "The Sounds (and Sights) of Silence: 'Way Down East' as Play and Film" (pages 91-99) have been stolen from Kauffmann's essay "D.W. Griffith's 'Way Down East'" in the journal "Horizon" (Spring, 1972).
In the January, 2011 issue of "Notes on Contemporay Literature" the following notice was published:
"This is to inform the readership of 'Notes' that 'Marguerite Ida-Helena Annabel in Gertrude Stein's Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights,' Vol. 40.4:4-6, by Bert Cardullo, is largely plagiarized from pages 82 through 85 of Professor Sarah Bey-Cheng's book 'Mama Dada: Gertrude Stein's Avant-Garde Theater' (Routledge, 2004; reprinted in paper 2005). We condemn Bert Cardullo's dishonesty and apologize to Professor Bey-Cheng and our readers that it escaped our editorial scrutiny."
Cardullo is not a scholar, but, rather, a charlatan and thief who has ransacked the work of critics he professes to respect and admire.
March 30, 2012
Dan Harper said...
Your pains-taking (!) is appreciated. There is an interview of Mr. Kauffmann conducted by Cardullo online. I wonder if Kauffmann was even there? My chief reaction is surprise that all this has gone unnoticed for so long.
March 30, 2012
Anonymous said...
Do you know what's disturbing? As a professor, Cardullo had a history of being extremely strict about plagiarism, warning of expulsion and other consequences for those who plagiarized.
Also disturbing? Sarah Bay-Cheng, from whom he stole material as listed above in the comments, was once his student.
April 15, 2012
from Cambridge Quarterly 2012
ReplyDeleteEditorial Notice
Bert Cardullo, ‘Attention, Attention Must Finally Be Unpaid: Death of a Salesman and the Reputation of Arthur Miller’, Cambridge Quarterly 40/4 (2011) pp. 328–341
Bert Cardullo, ‘Farce, Dreams, and Desire: Some Like It Hot Re-Viewed’, Cambridge Quarterly 39/2 (2010) pp.142–151
Bert Cardullo, ‘Married to the Job: Ermanno Olmi’s Il posto and I fidanzati Reconsidered’, Cambridge Quarterly 38/2 (2009) pp.120–129
Bert Cardullo, ‘Look Back in Bemusement: The New American Cinema, 1965–1970’, Cambridge Quarterly 37/4 (2008) pp. 375–386
The articles listed above have been retracted at the request of the Editors with the support of the Publisher owing to issues of plagiarism and duplicate publication.
We thank the reader who alerted us to the plagiarism in ‘Farce, Dreams and Desire’, which is substantially copied from Stanley Kauffmann’s ‘Billy Wilder’s Some Like it Hot’ (Horizon XV/1 (1973) pp. 65–70), and in ‘Married to the Job’, which is substantially copied from Stanley Kauffman’s reviews of ‘The Sound of Trumpets’ (The New Republic, 12 August 1963) and ‘The Fiancés’ (The New Republic, 15 February 1964).
Following further investigation, it was determined that ‘Look Back in Bemusement’ was a duplicate publication of Bert Cardullo, ‘Look Back in Bemusement: The New American Cinema, 1965–1970’, in Cinematic Illusions: Realism, Subjectivity, and the Avant-Garde (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle upon Tyne 2007) pp.1–7, while ‘Attention, Attention’ was a duplicate publication of Bert Cardullo, ‘Death of a Salesman, life of a Jew: ethnicity, business, and the character of Willy Loman’, Southwest Review (2007) 22 September.
http://muse.jhu.edu.proxy.lib.umich.edu/journals/cambridge_quarterly/v041/41.3.editor.html
Unbelievably, he's still at it. A piece that just came out in the Journal for Dramatic Theory and Criticism is he reprint of stuff from two of his books. It's disturbing that he is still being published and that no one checks!
ReplyDeleteOne of Cardullo's articles has appeared in the following journals:
ReplyDelete1) “The Doctored Dilemma: Shaw’s Approach to Tragedy in The Doctor’s Dilemma” in An Idea of the Drama: Six Modern Playwrights in One Movement, ed. Bert Cardullo (Peter Lang, 2011): 83-96.
2) “The Doctored Dilemma: Shaw’s Approach to Tragedy in The Doctor’s Dilemma” in Modern Language Review 106. 3 (July 2011): 647-661.
3) “Play Doctor, Doctor Death: Shaw, Ibsen and Modern Tragedy” in Comparative Drama 45.3 (Fall 2011): 271-288.
4) “Whose Life is It, Anyway? Shaw, The Doctor’s Dilemma and Modern Tragedy” in SHAW: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies 31 (2011): 102-117.
Another article, “Shaw, The Philanderer, and the (Un)Making of Shavian Drama,” appears in the following three publications:
1) Forum Modernes Theater 25.1 (2010): 33-44.
2) Neophilologus 96.1 (Jan 2012): 137-50.
3) An Idea of the Drama: Six Modern Playwrights in One Movement (Peter Lang, 2011), ed. Bert Cardullo (pp. 65-82).
Michel W. Pharand, general editor
SHAW: The Journal of Bernard Shaw Studies
Bert Cardullo took a chapter from my book 'Cinemas of the Other: A Personal Journey with Filmmakers from the Middle East and Central Asia' (2006) and put it in his book 'Waves from the East: New World Cinema, Asian Style; Essays and Interviews' (2010) without my permission
ReplyDeleteInfuriatingly and/or amusingly, Bert Cardullo has actually edited a book of Stanley Karuffmann’s film reviews.
ReplyDeleteThe publisher of that text, Anaphora Literary Press, has published an additional text by Cardullo, entitled SURVEY OF AMERICAN FILM. (The covers of both books look they were put together in Photoshop by a high school student in 1993.)
In his capsule bio on the publisher’s website Cardullo continues to cite published work that has been retracted and/or determined to be extensively plagiarized.
Is Anaphora aware that their editor/author is a serial plagiarist, particularly notorious for stealing from the work of Mr. Kauffmann?
I contacted the editor of Anaphora last December. I published some of my interesting correspondence with her in January--https://tangodelviudo.blogspot.com/2016/01/date-due.html. Cardullo is clever, you have to admit. A clever thief.
ReplyDeleteThe latest (fifth) reincarnation of the essay published by Cardullo in four journals in 2011 (see my August 4, 2014 post) is “The Doctored Dilemma: Shaw, The Doctor’s Dilemma and Modern Tragedy,” chapter 5 in his book Play Analysis: A Casebook on Modern Western Drama (Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, 2015).
ReplyDeleteMichel W. Pharand, general editor
SHAW: The Journal of Bernard Shaw Studies
The latest (fifth) reincarnation of the essay published by Cardullo in four journals in 2011 (see my August 4, 2014 post) is “The Doctored Dilemma: Shaw, The Doctor’s Dilemma and Modern Tragedy,” chapter 5 in his book Play Analysis: A Casebook on Modern Western Drama (Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, 2015).
ReplyDeleteMichel W. Pharand, general editor
SHAW: The Journal of Bernard Shaw Studies
We just received a submission from Bert of an essay on Glenngary Glen Ross that has been previously published at least once that I am aware of.
ReplyDeleteWF Purcell
Referee, Nanzan Review of American Studies
Thank you for keeping my original post up to date. A year ago (I think), Cardullo was located in Finland by authorities in Rochester, NY, where the publisher of one of his books was being sued for having neglected to acquire the rights from the estate of Stanley Kauffman to publish his uncollected writings on film. He was also relieved of a position on the faculty of a university in Malta when his reputation as a plagiarist caught up with him. Last I checked, he was teaching in Iraq.
Delete