Synopses & Reviews
Acclaimed by the
Los Angeles Review of Books as the most detailed year-by-year look at Hollywood during the first decade of the Cold War ever published, one that takes film analysis beyond the screen and sets it in its larger political context,”
An Army of Phantoms is a delightful” and amazing” (
Dissent) work of film history and cultural criticism by J. Hoberman, one of the foremost film critics writing today, addressing the dynamic synergy of American politics and American popular culture.
By tell[ing] the story not just of whats on the screen but what played out behind it” (The American Scholar), Hoberman orchestrates a colorful, sometimes surreal pageant wherein Cecil B. DeMille rubs shoulders with Douglas MacArthur, atomic tests are shown on live TV, God talks on the radio, and Joe McCarthy is bracketed with Marilyn Monroe. From cavalry Westerns, apocalyptic sci-fi flicks, and biblical spectaculars, movies to media events, congressional hearings and political campaigns, An Army of Phantoms remind[s] you what criticism is supposed to be: revelatory, reflective and as rapturous as the artwork itself” (Time Out New York).
Review
An Army of Phantoms is an energetic and adventurous book, in a curious hybrid genre; scholarly, even encyclopedic, yet written occasionally in a style akin to the Hush-Hush columns of
L.A. Confidential.”
London Review of BooksHobermans blend of galloping pace, incisive detail, and insistent engagement with multiple, often contradictory readings of the periods most emblematic films made for utterly compulsive reading.
[T]heres something majestic about the reach of Hobermans ambitions, the breadth and rigor of his research, and especially the curatorial vision brought to historical data. . . .An Army of Phantoms may prove to be the definitive text on its subject.” Film Comment
An Army of Phantoms belongs in every home, right next to the copy of Naming Names.” The Nation
[R]emind[s] you what criticism is supposed to be: revelatory, reflective and as rapturous as the artwork itself. Four stars.” Time Out New York
[A]n epic: an alternately fevered and measured account of what might be called the primal scene of American cinema.” Cineaste
If one movie is a manufactured fantasy, Hoberman writes, a decades worth is a stream of consciousness that insinuates itself into a shared national narrative. As film critic for the Village Voice since the 1980s, Hoberman has been our finest interpreter of that stream of consciousness....Hoberman tells the story not just of whats on the screen but of what played out behind it.” The American Scholar
[An] amazing book.” Dissent
An Army of Phantoms is the most detailed year-by-year look at Hollywood during the first decade of the Cold War ever published, one that takes film analysis beyond the screen and sets it in its larger political context.” Los Angeles Review of Books
[O]ne of the many virtues of An Army of Phantoms is how assiduously Hoberman collects prequel moments to our contemporary national fissures.” Bookforum
Review
Utterly compulsive reading
Theres something majestic about the reach of Hobermans ambitions
An Army of Phantoms may prove to be the definitive text on its subject.”
—Film Comment
An energetic and adventurous book
scholarly, even encyclopedic, yet written occasionally in a style akin to the Hush-Hush columns of L.A. Confidential.”
—London Review of Books
A welcome acknowledgment of how complicated the story of one particular period really is.”
—National Review
An epic: an alternately fevered and measured account of what might be called the primal scene of American cinema.”
—Cineaste
An important, overflowing and often compelling study of movie history
Smartly conceived, and its richness defies capture in a book review.”
—Haaretz
About the Author
Formerly the longtime senior film critic for the Village Voice (his recent dismissal was widely criticized and tweeted), J. Hoberman is the author of Bridge of Light, The Magic Hour, The Red Atlantis, Vulgar Modernism, On Jack Smiths Flaming Creatures (and Other Secret-Flix of Cinemaroc), and The Dream Life (The New Press) and the co-author, with Jonathan Rosenbaum, of Midnight Movies. He has written for Artforum, Bookforum, the London Review of Books, The Nation, the New York Review of Books, and the New York Times and has taught cinema history at Cooper Union since 1990. He lives in New York.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: From Gods Mouth to Your Ear
Prologue: Mission for Hollywood—Stalingrad to V-J Day
I. Aliens Among Us: Hollywood, 1946–47
MGMs Manhattan Project: The Beginning or the End?
When HUAC Came to Hollywood …
Showtime (Hooray for Robert Taylor!”)
Decision at the Waldorf: The Big Mop-up
II. Fighting for the Ministry of Truth, Justice, and the American Way, 1948–50
The Iron Curtain Parts and the Campaign Begins
Fort Apache, Our Home
Hollywood Alert: From Red Menace to Storm Warning
The Saucers Are Real!” (And Guilty of Treason)
Sunset/Panic/In a Lonely Place
Countdown
III. Redskin Menace from Outer Space: America at War, 1950–52
Across Rio Grande … into Manchuria?
This Is Korea?
The Communist Was a Thing for the FBI!
Three Cases: Joseph L., Carl F., and Elia Kazan
Campaign 52: Take Us to Our Leader, Big Jim
High Noon in the Universe
IV. The PaxAmericanArama: Eisenhower Power, 1953–55
No One on This Earth Can Help You”: Above and Beyond and Fantasies of Invasion
The Hammer, the Witch Trials, and Pickup on South Street
After Quo Vadis: Onward Christian Soldier, Watch Out for The Wild One
Marilyn Ascends, Joe Goes Down
Sh-Boom Them! (DeMillennium Approaching …)
V. Searchin: America on the Road, 1955–56
Coonskin Kids, or the Martians Have Landed
On the Brink of the Wild Frontier: Kiss Me Deadly, Rebel Without a Cause
Better Red Than Dead: Body-Snatched Prisoners of Comanche Mind Control
Thatll Be the Day!” The Spirit of 56
Epilogue: The Face of the Crowd
Sources
Index