A collection that will have readers scurrying to the video store.
A stimulating look at American films of the 1950s.
In this conversational yet highly lucid collection of essays, Harvey (Romantic Comedy in Hollywood, 1987) discusses the ways movies shaped—and were shaped by—the cultural changes that followed in the wake of WWII. Mercifully, these are not the musings of a social historian but of a movie nut—and the loving detail lavished on each of the films analyzed at length, beginning with Jacques Tourneur’s Out of the Past and ending with Douglas Sirk’s Imitation of Life, reflects Harvey’s infatuation with the medium. Although he is clearly a sophisticated guide to the decade and its movies, the author has little time for voguish theories borrowed from literary criticism and instead offers refreshing, common-sense insights. Typical of his style is his take on Brando’s portrayal of Stanley Kowalski: he “felt at times like the kind of explosive truth-teller the culture will occasionally produce just when the cant and the banality seem most unchallengeable, someone who cuts through all the bullshit and to hell with it.” Despite his enthusiasm for certain of Brando’s early performances, Harvey recognizes the profound contrast between the emerging “boy” stars of the ’50s—Brando, Dean, Clift—and their predecessors. While male leads had previously embodied the “antinarcissist idea of maleness,” these new stars “instead of inviting us to grow up, were commiserating with us about failing to.” In that respect, Harvey contends that the movies reflected the inward-turning mood of Americans during the Cold War. However, while the collection draws parallels between American society and its films, the primary focus remains on the movies themselves and the people who made them: Orson Welles, Nicholas Ray, Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, and Robert Siodmak, to name a few.
A collection that will have readers scurrying to the video store.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2001
ISBN: 0-394-58591-7
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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
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