Awards
A New York Times Notable Book for 2002
Synopses & Reviews
"What I set out to do is to help you see movies better, to experience them more deeply and sharply and richly," says James Harvey. And his critical method-reading a movie moment by moment, scene by scene-reveals new layers of meaning in even the most familiar films. See how 1940s film noir evolves into 1950s melodrama; how the femme fatale of the 1940s (think Barbara Stanwyck) becomes blander and blonder (think Doris Day) and then younger and sexier (yes, Marilyn); and how the new boy-men-Clift, Brando, Dean-finally steal the show. Harvey also discusses the directors: Hitchcock, Ophuls, Kazan, Welles. Comprehensive, vivid, and charismatic, Movie Love in the Fifties is a fresh look at the films, directors, and actors of a dynamic decade. "Whether he's escorting us through Nicholas Ray's Bitter Victory, Douglas Sirk's Imitation of Life, Orson Welles's Magnificent Ambersons, or any one of a dozen other great films from the period, Harvey lends us an astuteness of analysis and a power of observation that we couldn't have had on our own."-Wendy Lesser, The American Prospect
Review
"The person who has done more than anyone else in recent years to help audiences see classic American movies is James Harvey. In two passionate, invaluable and readable works of intuitive scholarship, Romantic Comedy in Hollywood, From Lubitsch to Sturges and Movie Love in the Fifties, Harvey has shown himself to be extraordinarily responsive to what's on the screen....Without extrapolating or making outsize claims that would render his opinions suspicious...Harvey simply writes about what's on the screen. Paying attention to the composition of shots, the rhythm of editing, the looks on the actors' faces and their line readings...Harvey makes case after case for the daring of movies that were either overlooked or regarded as slick Hollywood product." Charles Taylor, Salon.com
Review
"The individual chapters...are all great, but Harvey is at his languid best parsing director Douglas Sirk and producer Ross Hunter, not least for their Imitation of Life. Individual films, such as Vertigo and The Big Heat, also receive chapter-length consideration in this engrossing study." Mike Tribby, Booklist
Review
"[Harvey] notices what's going on in a film about as well as anyone writing today....A superior exercise in criticism." The Washington Post Book World
Review
"Harvey's close, sensitive readings of films as texts and his analyses of shots and characterization mean that the reader does not need to have seen the films to appreciate this work....His movie love is inspired and infectious." Library Journal
Synopsis
Includes bibliographical references (p. 429-432) and index.
Synopsis
A masterly work of American film and cultural history by a critic who, "like Pauline Kael, has the gift of describing actors with terrific acuity."-New York Times
About the Author
A playwright, essayist, and critic, James Harvey is also the author of Romantic Comedy. His work has appeared in The New York Review of Books, among other publications. He lives in Brooklyn.