Every few years, someone on the internet rediscovers that the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz has a 99 percent “fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes, as opposed to 100 percent, thanks to one “rotten” critique. One writer called the review “one of the most churlish and thus entertaining professional assessments in the history of fictional media.” Another said it’s “a testament to the fact that no film, no matter how great, can truly be called ‘universally acclaimed.’”

The critic in question was the New Republic’s Otis Ferguson, who, like Stanley Kauffmann after him, was one of the great film essayists of his era. Both men were noted for their innovative approaches to the form, and their contrarian opinions.

Kauffmann, who wrote for the New Republic from 1958 until his death in 2013, authored 11 books during his illustrious career. He refused to side with any of the myriad critical camps that emerged during his tenure, such as the auteurists, preferring instead to engage with film on classical terms: story, character, structure. Kauffmann was also a europhile through and through; give him Fellini or Truffaut over Spielberg or Tarantino any day. He disdained the American tendency to bombast and, as he saw it, the fetishization of childhood.

Ferguson joined the New Republic in 1933 as a book critic before switching to film. He held that post until shipping off to fight in WWII in 1942, and died in combat a year later. Ferguson never enjoyed the adulation and widespread acclaim that Kauffmann did, though he was no less influential. His writing practically gave birth to the idea of film criticism as art. Ferguson was a skeptic of wantonly high-brow art and lover of folksy films, with a particular soft spot for comedy.

The following is a survey of their most daring reviews that broke with the consensus.