Though he won’t make you want to see all Godard’s films, MacCabe makes a strong case for the filmmaker who, “if he is not a...
Five ways of looking at the celebrated enfant grise of French cinema.
Whatever the result is, it isn’t a portrait of the artist at 70. As he ages, filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard becomes ever more elusive, exactly as if he were ducking out of his portrait sitting—a treatment entirely appropriate for the bad-boy giant of the French New Wave who continues to turn out films (over 55 features and countless shorts to date) at a breakneck pace. MacCabe (English and Film/Univ. of Pittsburgh) approaches each phase of his career from a different angle. The history of his French/Swiss family frames the chronicle of his abortive school years through the death of his mother and his estrangement from his father. Postwar French intellectual history provides the background for his writing for the influential journal Cahiers du Cinéma, and film history the context for his heady New Wave features, still intoxicating in their attempt to capture “the real on the run,” from Breathless (1959) through his split with leading lady Anna Karina after Two or Three Things I Know About Her (1967). Noting that Godard is unusual in having participated in both the revolutionary New Wave aesthetics and the broader revolutionary stance of the May 1968 protests, MacCabe uses political history as a framework for the films his Dziga Vertov collective produced before turning finally to his personal acquaintance with the master to continue his story from 1971 to the present. The figure who emerges from this unorthodox biography is brusque, uncompromising, capable of great rudeness and sweepingly romantic gestures, and utterly devoted to a medium his films shook up from top to bottom.
Though he won’t make you want to see all Godard’s films, MacCabe makes a strong case for the filmmaker who, “if he is not a novelist . . . is the greatest essayist and one of the greatest poets that the cinema has known.” (b&w photos throughout)Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-374-16378-2
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2003
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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