by James Harvey ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 8, 2014
Harvey’s meticulously close reading of movies illuminatingly analyzes both the “controlling sensibility” of stars and the...
A movie critic considers the mystery of star power.
Playwright and essayist Harvey (Emeritus, Film and Literature/SUNY, Stony Brook; Movie Love in the Fifties, 2001, etc.) takes his title from James Baldwin’s observation about movie stars: “One does not go to see them act; one goes to watch them be.” A star’s personality, the author contends, transcends particular performances to generate “enforced intimacy” with the viewer. “A screen star,” he writes, “generally appropriates her role rather than disappearing into it (as an ordinary actor might do).” Greta Garbo, for example, “offered something that approached sublimity,” which emerged even in the “dead weight” of a movie like Anna Karenina (1935). Ingrid Bergman shone like “a goddess” even when miscast, “because it’s her more than the character…that you respond to.” Beginning with stars of the 1930s and ’40s, Harvey analyzes performances by Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Bette Davis, John Wayne, Bergman and Charles Laughton. In a section on “realists,” he turns to Robert De Niro, notably his role as Noodles in Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America (1984); performances by Lily Tomlin and Ronee Blakley in Robert Altman’s Nashville (1975); and Pam Grier, the raunchy heroine of Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown (1997). Harvey also looks at directors such as Jean-Luc Godard, whose masterful close-ups celebrated star quality, and Carl Theodor Dreyer, “arguably the preeminent ‘religious’ filmmaker of our modern cinema time.” He cites Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), in which Maria Falconetti had an “overwhelming star turn” as Joan. “There is something religious about the movie experience,” the author writes, and he ends his film journey with a worshipful exegesis of Robert Bresson’s Balthazar (1966), in which the star is a donkey.
Harvey’s meticulously close reading of movies illuminatingly analyzes both the “controlling sensibility” of stars and the viewer’s process of “intense watching.”Pub Date: July 8, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-571-21197-5
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Faber & Faber/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2014
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by James Harvey
by E.T.A. Hoffmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1996
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
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by E.T.A. Hoffmann ; adapted by Natalie Andrewson ; illustrated by Natalie Andrewson
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by E.T.A. Hoffmann & illustrated by Julie Paschkis
by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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developed by Ludwig Bemelmans ; illustrated by Steven Salerno
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by Ludwig Bemelmans ; illustrated by Steven Salerno
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