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From the Silents Until Now
Library of America
March 2006
825 pages ISBN: 1931082928 Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
A provocative and dynamic force in American culture since
the early twentieth century, movies have presented several
generations of American writers with a new, fascinating, and
challenging subject. How writers rose to the challenge, and
in the process created an extraordinary body of
work-passionate, contentious, restlessly curious-makes for a
dazzling and constantly entertaining volume. "I have
focused," writes editor Phillip Lopate, "on film criticism
as an art in itself-the magnet for strong, elegant,
eloquent, enjoyable writing." American Movie Critics is an anthology of unparalleled scope
that charts the rise of movies as art, industry, and mass
entertainment. Beginning in the silent era-with poets Vachel
Lindsay and Carl Sandburg hailing the new medium and Edmund
Wilson paying tribute to Chaplin's Gold Rush-the collection
traces the rapid evolution of the medium in an age of
tumultuous political and social changes. Here are the great
movie critics who forged a forceful vernacular idiom for
talking about the new art: Otis Ferguson in the 1930s
finding in James Cagney "the dignity of the genuine worn as
easily as his skin"; James Agee in the 1940s on American war
films and the advent of Italian neo-realism; Manny Farber,
Pauline Kael, Andrew Sarris, Molly Haskell, Vincent Canby,
and others from what Lopate calls "the golden age of movie
criticism" from the 1950s through the '70s, a period when
enthusiasms ran high, and arguments over style and content
often took on a larger-than-life quality. Here too are the
finest film reviewers on the contemporary scene, including
Richard Schickel, Roger Ebert, and Manohla Dargis. Joining the full-time film writers are many distinguished
American authors weighing in on a range of cinematic
experiences, including Ralph Ellison, Susan Sontag, James
Baldwin, Brendan Gill, and John Ashbery. Together they
define an often underappreciated genre of American writing,
a tradition filled with the "energy, passion, and analytical
juice" that for Lopate mark the best in movie criticism.
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