Unavailable
Unavailable
Unavailable
Ebook273 pages5 hours
The Rhapsodes: How 1940s Critics Changed American Film Culture
Rating: 0 out of 5 stars
()
Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this ebook
Pauline Kael, Andrew Sarris, and Roger Ebert were three of America’s most revered and widely read film critics, more famous than many of the movies they wrote about. But their remarkable contributions to the burgeoning American film criticism of the 1960s and beyond were deeply influenced by four earlier critics: Otis Ferguson, James Agee, Manny Farber, and Parker Tyler. Throughout the 1930s and ’40s, Ferguson, Agee, Farber, and Tyler scrutinized what was on the screen with an intensity not previously seen in popular reviewing. Although largely ignored by the arts media of the day, they honed the sort of serious discussion of films that would be made popular decades later by Kael, Sarris, Ebert and their contemporaries.
With The Rhapsodes, renowned film scholar and critic David Bordwell—an heir to both those legacies—restores to a wider audience the work of Ferguson, Agee, Farber, and Tyler, critics he calls the “Rhapsodes” for the passionate and deliberately offbeat nature of their vernacular prose. Each broke with prevailing currents in criticism in order to find new ways to talk about the popular films that contemporaries often saw at best as trivial, at worst as a betrayal of art. Ferguson saw in Hollywood an engaging, adroit mode of popular storytelling. Agee sought in cinema the lyrical epiphanies found in romantic poetry. Farber, trained as a painter, brought a pictorial intelligence to bear on film. A surrealist, Tyler treated classic Hollywood as a collective hallucination that invited both audience and critic to find moments of subversive pleasure. With his customary clarity and brio, Bordwell takes readers through the relevant cultural and critical landscape and considers the critics’ writing styles, their conceptions of films, and their quarrels. He concludes by examining the profound impact of Ferguson, Agee, Farber, and Tyler on later generations of film writers.
The Rhapsodes allows readers to rediscover these remarkable critics who broke with convention to capture what they found moving, artful, or disappointing in classic Hollywood cinema and explores their robust—and continuing—influence.
With The Rhapsodes, renowned film scholar and critic David Bordwell—an heir to both those legacies—restores to a wider audience the work of Ferguson, Agee, Farber, and Tyler, critics he calls the “Rhapsodes” for the passionate and deliberately offbeat nature of their vernacular prose. Each broke with prevailing currents in criticism in order to find new ways to talk about the popular films that contemporaries often saw at best as trivial, at worst as a betrayal of art. Ferguson saw in Hollywood an engaging, adroit mode of popular storytelling. Agee sought in cinema the lyrical epiphanies found in romantic poetry. Farber, trained as a painter, brought a pictorial intelligence to bear on film. A surrealist, Tyler treated classic Hollywood as a collective hallucination that invited both audience and critic to find moments of subversive pleasure. With his customary clarity and brio, Bordwell takes readers through the relevant cultural and critical landscape and considers the critics’ writing styles, their conceptions of films, and their quarrels. He concludes by examining the profound impact of Ferguson, Agee, Farber, and Tyler on later generations of film writers.
The Rhapsodes allows readers to rediscover these remarkable critics who broke with convention to capture what they found moving, artful, or disappointing in classic Hollywood cinema and explores their robust—and continuing—influence.
Unavailable
Author
David Bordwell
David Bordwell is Jacques Ledoux Professor of Film Studies and Hilldale Professor of Humanities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Among his books are Figures Traced in Light: On Cinematic Staging (California, 2004), Film History: An Introduction (with Kristin Thompson, 2002), Planet Hong Kong: Popular Cinema and the Art of Entertainment (2000), and On the History of Film Style (1997).
Read more from David Bordwell
The Rhapsodes: How 1940s Critics Changed American Film Culture Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Great Movies III Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Reinventing Hollywood: How 1940s Filmmakers Changed Movie Storytelling Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Minding Movies: Observations on the Art, Craft, and Business of Filmmaking Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related to The Rhapsodes
Related ebooks
The Way Hollywood Tells It: Story and Style in Modern Movies Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Goodbye Cinema, Hello Cinephilia: Film Culture in Transition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ebert's Bests Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5An Invention without a Future: Essays on Cinema Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Great Movies IV Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Hollywood As Historian: American Film in a Cultural Context Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Film Crazy: Interviews with Hollywood Legends Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsStreet with No Name: A History of the Classic American Film Noir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Easy Riders Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-And Rock 'N Roll Generation Save Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Martin Scorsese and the American Dream Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5You're Only as Good as Your Next One: 100 Great Films, 100 Good Films, and 100 for Which I Should Be Shot Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5American Films of the 70s: Conflicting Visions Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Awake in the Dark: The Best of Roger Ebert Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Italian Neorealism: Rebuilding the Cinematic City Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Art of the Cinematographer Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Personal Views: Explorations in Film Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Short History of Cahiers du Cinema Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Certain Tendency of the Hollywood Cinema, 1930-1980 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hollywood's Last Golden Age: Politics, Society, and the Seventies Film in America Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Philosophy of the Coen Brothers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5French New Wave Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Cinema of Robert Altman: Hollywod Maverick Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsShooting Midnight Cowboy: Art, Sex, Loneliness, Liberation, and the Making of a Dark Classic Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hollywood Lighting from the Silent Era to Film Noi Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The New Hollywood: From Bonnie and Clyde to Star Wars Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIndependent Cinema Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCinema '62: The Greatest Year at the Movies Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Film Criticism in the Digital Age Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMake My Day: Movie Culture in the Age of Reagan Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Performing Arts For You
Becoming Free Indeed: My Story of Disentangling Faith from Fear Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Sisters Brothers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wuthering Heights Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Hamlet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5For colored girls who have considered suicide/When the rainbow is enuf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Macbeth (new classics) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Coreyography: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Robin Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes: Revised and Complete Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Diamond Eye: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Stories I Only Tell My Friends: An Autobiography Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Importance of Being Earnest: A Play Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Science of Storytelling: Why Stories Make Us Human and How to Tell Them Better Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Romeo and Juliet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Quite Nice and Fairly Accurate Good Omens Script Book: The Script Book Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Trial Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Count Of Monte Cristo (Unabridged) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Our Town: A Play in Three Acts Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Dolls House Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hollywood's Dark History: Silver Screen Scandals Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life through the Power of Storytelling Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Lucky Dog Lessons: From Renowned Expert Dog Trainer and Host of Lucky Dog: Reunions Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Strange Loop Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Into the Woods: A Five-Act Journey Into Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Unsheltered: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The World Turned Upside Down: Finding the Gospel in Stranger Things Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mash: A Novel About Three Army Doctors Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Whale / A Bright New Boise Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for The Rhapsodes
Rating: 0 out of 5 stars
0 ratings
0 ratings0 reviews