An insightful and solidly documented though often ponderous history of the early days of cinema—of primary interest to film...
A biography of the silent film–era producer and theater entrepreneur whose name lives on through the major studio he founded.
In her ambitious first book, former magazine and newspaper journalist Krefft aims to resurrect the reputation of the pioneering though largely forgotten studio mogul William Fox (1879-1952), whose background story is similar to those of many of the founding fathers of film: tirelessly driven men whose families emigrated from Eastern Europe in the late 19th century. Their stories, including Fox’s, were vividly recounted in Neil Gabler’s An Empire of Their Own (1988). However, unlike many of his Hollywood contemporaries, Fox would maintain his residence in New York, and his contributions were encapsulated within the silent film era. Yet his achievements were significant. He built a multimillion-dollar empire of luxury movie theaters beginning with one small theater in Brooklyn. As a studio head, he had the vision to leverage several new revenue outlets, including the foreign market. He launched the careers of early stars such as Theda Bara and Tom Mix and was responsible for producing a number of highly regarded films, including F.W. Murnau’s Sunrise (1927). In 1929, he suffered a series of disastrous events, beginning with a car accident that summer and the Wall Street crash, which derailed his attempt to merge Fox theaters with Loews releasing company. This would contribute to his losing control of the Fox Film Corporation, leading his career and personal fortune into a downward spiral. Krefft provides an in-depth overview of the early film industry and a lucid assessment of Fox’s role in advancing the technology, art, and business of making films. Though her end goal is ultimately achieved, this hefty narrative is weighed down by excessive details surrounding her subject’s financial dealings. Yet Fox the man remains somewhat elusive. The author’s writing lacks the storytelling verve that a more seasoned film historian like David Thomson brings to his work.
An insightful and solidly documented though often ponderous history of the early days of cinema—of primary interest to film scholars.Pub Date: Nov. 28, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-113606-1
Page Count: 944
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
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