Recipe: Finding Film Reviews and Exhibitor Reports

This recipe shows you how to use the general-reception profile to find contemporary reviews, exhibitor comments, and box office reports for your films.

When to Use This Profile

Perfect for researching:

📰 How films were critically received when released
💰 Box office performance and exhibitor reactions
🎭 Contemporary audience reception
📊 Trade assessments of commercial potential

What Makes This Profile Special

The general-reception profile prioritizes:

Review terminology from the period ("notices", "comment")
Trade publications that featured reviews
Exhibitor reports from those booking the films
Reduces noise by downweighting studio marketing materials

Step-by-Step Example

1. Prepare Your Films

Create films.csv:

title,year,director,studio
"The Maltese Falcon",1941,"John Huston","Warner Bros."
"Citizen Kane",1941,"Orson Welles","RKO"
"The Best Years of Our Lives",1946,"William Wyler","RKO"
"Casablanca",1942,"Michael Curtiz","Warner Bros."

2. Run the Search

node core/magic-lantern-v5.js films.csv --profile=general-reception --corpus=medium

3. What You'll See

Click the triangle to see actual output!

✨ MAGIC LANTERN v5.1.0

📚 Research Profile: General Reception
   Focus on reviews and exhibitor reports
📊 Corpus Profile: medium

🏮 Checking Lantern availability...
✅ Lantern is available!

🎬 Loading films from: films.csv
✨ Found 4 films to research!

🎬 Processing 1 films...
📊 Progress: 1/4

======================================================================
🎭 COMPREHENSIVE SEARCH: The Maltese Falcon (1941)
======================================================================

🎯 Generating search strategies for: The Maltese Falcon
✨ Generated 21 unique search strategies!

📊 Strategy execution order (by profile weight):
   1. [2.1] title_review - Film title + review
   2. [2] title_notices - Film title + notices (period review term)
   3. [1.8] title_comment - Film title + comment
   4. [1] director_title - Director + title
   5. [1] known_star - Known star: Humphrey Bogart
   6. [0.4] title_studio - Film title + Studio
   7. [0.3] exact_title - Exact title match
   8. [0.2] title_no_article - Title without "The"

🔍 Beginning searches...

🔍 [HIGH] Film title + review
   Weight: 2.1 | Type: title_review
   Keywords: "The Maltese Falcon" + "review"
   ✅ Found 37 results!

🔍 [HIGH] Film title + notices (period review term)
   Weight: 2 | Type: title_notices
   Keywords: "The Maltese Falcon" + "notices"
   ✅ Found 2 results!

🔍 [HIGH] Film title + comment
   Weight: 1.8 | Type: title_comment
   Keywords: "The Maltese Falcon" + "comment"
   ✅ Found 14 results!

[...more searches...]

   ⚡ Reached maximum results limit (50)

💾 Results saved to: /magic-lantern/results/search-results_20250614_185244.json
   Total films: 4
   Total sources: 214
🎉 Search complete!

4. Understanding Your Results

Your top search results will be saved in a JSON file, ranked by score:

[
  {
    "film": {
      "title": "The Maltese Falcon",
      "year": "1941",
      "director": "John Huston",
      "studio": "Warner Bros."
    },
    "totalUniqueSources": 52,
    "searchStrategySummary": {
      "title_review": 20,
      "title_comment": 12,
      "title_notices": 2
    },
    "sources": [
      {
        "id": "harrisonsreports24harr_0159",
        "type": "Periodicals",
        "attributes": {
          "dateString": {
            "id": "https://lantern.mediahist.org/catalog/harrisonsreports24harr_0159#dateString",
            "type": "document_value",
            "attributes": {
              "value": "1942",
              "label": "Date"
            },
          "body": {
            "id": "https://lantern.mediahist.org/catalog/harrisonsreports24harr_0159#body",
            "type": "document_value",
            "attributes": {
              "value": "  enjoyed  \"<em>The</em>  <em>Maltese</em>  <em>Falcon</em>,\"  this  espionage melodrama  is  sure  to  please  them,  for  again  John",
              "label": "Excerpt"
            }
        "links": {
          "self": "https://lantern.mediahist.org/catalog/harrisonsreports24harr_0159"
        },
        "foundBy": "title_notices",
        "searchQuery": "\"The Maltese Falcon\" \"notices\"",
        "strategyConfidence": "high",
        "keywords": {
          "keyword": "\"The Maltese Falcon\"",
          "second_keyword": "\"notices\""
        },
        "scoring": {
          "publication": "harrisons reports",
          "position": 22,
          "finalScore": 63.80882352941177,
          "components": {
            "credibility": 50,
            "precision": 55,
            "diversity": 90,
            "relevance": 67.05882352941177
          },
          "breakdown": {
            "credibility": 17.5,
            "precision": 13.75,
            "diversity": 22.5,
            "relevance": 10.058823529411764
          }
        },
        "fullText": null,
        "fullTextFetched": false,
        "fullTextFetchedAt": null
      },
    }

[...more results...]

Search Strategies Used

See all strategies and their weights

High Priority (run first):

title_review (2.1): "Film Title" + "review"
title_notices (2.0): "Film Title" + "notices" (period term)
title_comment (1.8): "Film Title" + "comment"
title_exhibitor (1.6): "Film Title" + "exhibitor"

Medium Priority:

title_boxoffice (1.0): "Film Title" + "box office"

Low Priority (run last):

title_studio (0.4): "Studio Name" + "Film Title"
exact_title (0.3): "Film Title" only
title_no_article (0.2): Title without The/A/An

Disabled:

Production searches
Advertisement searches
Author searches

Next Steps

Fetch Full Text Selectively

After searching, get full text for high-scoring results:

# Get top 50 review results
node tools/fetch-full-text.js results/search-results_[timestamp].json --top=50 --score-threshold=80

Review Results

📖 Found interesting reviews? Use the annotation helper to extract key quotes
🔍 Need production context? Run the same films with --profile=default
📊 Want box office focus? Increase weight for title_boxoffice strategy

Customizing This Profile

Want to adjust the focus? Edit config/profiles/general-reception.profile.js:

// Boost fan magazine reviews
"photoplay": 1.5,  // was 1.0
"modern screen": 1.5,  // was 1.0

// Add new review search
weights: {
    'title_criticism': 2.0,  // Add this
}

Example Research Question

"How did critics and exhibitors respond to socially conscious films of the 1940s?"

Create CSV of relevant films
Run with general-reception profile
Look for patterns in exhibitor concerns vs. critic praise
Compare urban (Variety) vs. regional (BoxOffice) responses

Tip: Historical review terminology differed from today. "Notices" and "comment" were more common than "review" in many publications.

Recipe: Finding Film Reviews and Exhibitor Reports - nonmodernist/magic-lantern GitHub Wiki

Recipe: Finding Film Reviews and Exhibitor Reports

When to Use This Profile

What Makes This Profile Special

Step-by-Step Example

1. Prepare Your Films

2. Run the Search

3. What You'll See

4. Understanding Your Results

Search Strategies Used

Next Steps

Fetch Full Text Selectively

Review Results

Customizing This Profile

Example Research Question

⚠️ GitHub.com Fallback ⚠️

Recipe: Finding Film Reviews and Exhibitor Reports - nonmodernist/magic-lantern GitHub Wiki

Recipe: Finding Film Reviews and Exhibitor Reports

When to Use This Profile

What Makes This Profile Special

Step-by-Step Example

1. Prepare Your Films

2. Run the Search

3. What You'll See

4. Understanding Your Results

Search Strategies Used

Next Steps

Fetch Full Text Selectively

Review Results

Customizing This Profile

Example Research Question

⚠️ **GitHub.com Fallback** ⚠️

⚠️ GitHub.com Fallback ⚠️