Basinger brings considerable expertise but insufficient adventurousness to the all-too-often neglected world of silent film. Silent film, to paraphrase L.P. Hartley, is a foreign country, they do things differently there. The silent cinema had its own aesthetic, in some ways profoundly different from the movies that followed, and that aesthetic is unfamiliar to all but a handful of film scholars and buffs. On the evidence of her superb analysis of the ’40s family melodrama, A Woman’s View (1993), Basinger should be an excellent guide to that lost era. She has produced a sizeable tome devoted to 16 prominent actors and actresses (and Rin-Tin-Tin) of the period whose purpose, as she explains, is to celebrate “a group of silent film stars who are somehow forgotten, misunderstood or underappreciated,” a group that might be said to include almost anyone who was a star in Hollywood’s silent era. Unfortunately, Basinger is unduly timid in surveying the field. She includes among her subjects such overly familiar faces as Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, Rudolf Valentino and Lon Chaney. Certainly, as Basinger points out, Fairbanks and Valentino are not sufficiently recognized for their comedic efforts (indeed, the first half of Fairbanks’s formidable career consists of breakneck comedies), but surely there were others equally deserving of rediscovery. Basinger is smart and perceptive, and her survey is filled with startlingly astute flashes. For example, she connects the appeal of Mack Sennett’s slapstick comedy to a world in which physical labor was still the norm rather than the exception. But the results, for all its undeniable intelligence, feels at once overly familiar yet insufficiently detailed. A mixed blessing, of considerable value but finally unsatisfying. (300 b&w photos)
Pub Date: Nov. 4, 1999
ISBN: 0-679-43840-8
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1999
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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