James Baldwin At The Movies... Provocative, timeless,
brilliant.
Bette Davis's eyes, Joan Crawford's
bitchy elegance, Stepin Fetchit's stereotype, Sidney
Poitier's superhuman black man... These are the movie stars
and the qualities that influenced James Baldwin... and now
become part of his incisive look at racism in American
movies.
Baldwin challenges the underlying assumptions
in such films as In the Heat of the Night,Guess
Who's Coming to Dinner, and The Exorcist,
offering us a vision of America's self-delusions and
deceptions. Here are our loves and hates, biases and
cruelties, fears and ignorance reflected by the films that
have entertained us and shaped our consciousness. And here,
too, is the stunning prose of a writer whose passion never
diminished his struggle for equality, justice, and social
change.
From The Birth of a Nation to The
Exorcist--one of America's most important writers turns
his critical eye to American film.