Synopses & Reviews
Pauline Kael, Andrew Sarris, and Roger Ebert were three of Americaandrsquo;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 andrsquo;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.
and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;
With The Rhapsodes, renowned film scholar and critic David Bordwellandmdash;an heir to both those legaciesandmdash;restores to a wider audience the work of Ferguson, Agee, Farber, and Tyler, critics he calls the andldquo;Rhapsodesandrdquo; 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 criticsandrsquo; 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 robustandmdash;and continuingandmdash;influence.
Synopsis
When Roger Ebert died in April, 2013, it marked the end of an era--he was the last of the superstar movie critics who emerged in the 1960s in the wake of the success of Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris. In and#147;The Rhapsodesand#8221; David Bordwell traces this phenomenon back to four important writers: Otis Ferguson, James Agee, Manny Farber, and Parker Tyler. Each defended an idea of the artistic worth of Hollywood cinema. Ferguson saw in Hollywood an adept, engaging 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 Hollywood; he saw movies as a narrative art operating through striking visual expression. Tyler, of Surrealist inclinations, treated Hollywood films as a collective hallucination that invited both audience and critic to find moments of subversive pleasure. Why and#147;Rhapsodesand#8221;? As Bordwell explains, itand#8217;s and#147;by analogy with the ancient reciters of verse who, inspired by the gods, became carried away. The tag aims to emphasize the offbeat, passionate nature of their vernacular prose.and#8221; Bordwelland#8217;s own prose displays his customary erudition, clarity, and brio, demonstrating both his critical acuity and his skill as a cultural historian. He lays the groundwork for his analysis in an introduction and two general chapters concerning the writersand#8217; cultural and critical milieu and then devotes a single chapter to each of them. In and#147;Afterlivesand#8221; he considers their legacy, particularly their importance in helping initiate the change in taste that occurred in film culture in the the 1950s and 1960s. In brief, what Bordwell provides in his essayistic exploration is both an appreciation of these four writers and an explanation of how they reflected and expanded the ways in which films were understood and discussed.
About the Author
David Bordwell is the Jacques Ledoux Professor of Film Studies Emeritus at the University of Wisconsinandndash;Madison. With Kristin Thompson, he is coauthor of Film Art: An Introduction and Film History: An Introduction and the blog Observations on Film Art, which can be found at http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog.
Table of Contents
Introduction: The Film Critic as Superstar
1and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; The Rhapsodes
2and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; A Newer Criticism
3and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; Otis Ferguson: The Way of the Camera
4and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; James Agee: All There and Primed to Go Off
5and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; Manny Farber: Space Man
6and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; Parker Tyler: A Suave and Wary Guest
7and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; Afterlives
Acknowledgments
Sources
Index