Stanley Kauffmann, whose literate, tightly constructed movie reviews appeared in The New Republic for more than a half-century and set a standard for critical ease and erudition, died on Wednesday in Manhattan. He was 97.

His death was announced by Leon Wieseltier, the literary editor of The New Republic, who said the cause was pneumonia. Mr. Kauffmann wrote for the magazine until his last months.

Mr. Kauffmann went from being an actor and a stage manager with a Manhattan repertory company to a book editor and a writer of vaguely philosophical novels before becoming a film critic at The New Republic in 1958. His reflective, highly wrought essays appeared weekly for the next 55 years, with a break in 1966, when he was, briefly, the chief theater critic for The New York Times.

He also doubled as the theater critic for The New Republic from 1969 to 1979, but it was as a film critic that his influence was felt, even if it was hard to define, since he belonged to no camp. His abiding interest in theatrical givens like theme, story, dramatic construction and character could make him seem old-fashioned, and set him in direct opposition to the auteur school, with its emphasis on the formal aspects of film. Readers came to him for reviews that read like mini-tutorials, the product of a deeply literary mind and a graceful pen.