Lately, I've been taking a copy of Agee on Film with me to screenings. Tucking the bulky paperback under my arm -- a collection of James Agee's 1940s movie reviews from Time and The Nation magazines -- I use it to conceal my reporter's notepad.
After seven years of reviewing films, I still try to appear like an Average Joe moviegoer. In my opinion, there's something geeky about a person scribbling notes during a movie. Actually, the only thing geekier is someone who reads a book inside a movie theater.
But in those extra-long minutes before the preview screening begins, during the T-shirt giveaways and promotional banter, I squeeze a few more minutes of Agee into my life. Reading his matter-of-fact, intelligent criticism is the best preparation for watching and reviewing another Hollywood blockbuster.
Agee on Film is just one of four recently published books in a new series of re-released film books from the Modern Library. Edited by Martin Scorsese and titled Modern Library: The Movies, Agee's film reviews join golden-age producer David O. Selznick's collected office memos; a series of articles, essays and reviews about the 1968 blockbuster, 2001: A Space Odyssey; and poet Vachel Lindsay's landmark 1915 book about film aesthetics.
In the halfway point of summer's dog days, I can't imagine a better break from countless trips to the multiplex. Now, a film fan can enjoy the movies out in the summer sun, under a shade tree, away at the beach or half-napping in a backyard hammock.
Almost everyone loves going to the movies. For those times when you need a break from box-office lines, these four books offer a chance to love movies away from the cinema.
The Making of 2001: A Space Odyssey
This collection of essays, articles and contemporary reviews offers a mixed bag of commentaries about director Stanley Kubrick's 1968 masterpiece.
2001 opened in theaters with plenty of mystery and some real surprises. It's important to remember that this was before the onslaught of Entertainment Tonight, Entertainment Weekly and other showbiz coverage. Unlike the relentless Internet gossip surrounding a current blockbuster like X-Men, past blockbusters like 2001 still possessed the ability to surprise.
The book's best work belongs to the production observations by 2001 author Arthur C. Clarke. His correspondence with Kubrick traces the evolution of the film from a 1965 meeting to its release three years later.
Contemporary reviews reveal the infamy surrounding 2001's initial release. It's funny to read New York Times critic Reneta Adler describing the now-famous monolith as a "1950s chocolate bar." These negative reviews are made more poignant in light of the recent criticisms surrounding Kubrick's final film, 1999's Eyes Wide Shut.
After MGM publicists helped remake 2001 as "the Ultimate Trip," the film went on to change the course of movies. This book helps explain why.
CityBeat grade: C.
Memo from David O. Selznick
There are plenty of Hollywood insider books. It's the one showbiz genre that translates successfully onto the printed page. But few movie buffs remember much after reading a recent book like The Operator: David Geffen Builds, Buys, and Sells the New Hollywood.
That's not the case with this collection of memos from Hollywood producer David O. Selznick, the man behind film classics like Gone With the Wind, Rebecca, A Farewell to Arms and A Star Is Born. This collection of memos from 1916 to 1965 creates the ultimate view of a moviemaking giant.
It's Selznick's words about Gone With the Wind that steal the book's spotlight: "The pressure for haste on Gone With the Wind was severe, but I knew that 75 million people would want my scalp if I chose the wrong Scarlett, and that there was no agreement on who, among all the girls in pictures, was the right Scarlett. For instance, there were just as many people against Bette Davis as there were for her; maybe more. So I had no alternative to sticking to it and looking everywhere."
Selznick doesn't always come off well in these memos, but that's part of the book's gossipy pleasure. The ranting style of his writing makes sense once you realize that he was buzzed on Benzedrine. After reading the book well past the midnight hour, you'll feel like Benzedrine is coursing through your own veins.
CityBeat grade: A.
The Art of the Moving Picture
To many eyes, films are products of entertainment. They're synergistic adverts ready to promote the latest merchandise and fuel future projects for the media conglomerates.
It's becoming difficult to understand film as an artform -- which makes for a hostile environment for Lindsay's keen analysis of early silent films.
What keeps The Art of the Moving Picture relevant is that it dissolves into obtuse metaphysics. Instead, Lindsay contemplates the emergence of the Hollywood dream factory, the ever-changing use of new film technology and the idea of the film director as the author of his artwork. Basically, Lindsay created the "auteur theory" 40 years before French critics coined the phrase.
Film isn't so new anymore. The art of moviemaking that Lindsay discusses will soon be completely replaced by digital production. But his discussions of story, mood and character remain true and vibrant, and his thoughts are timeless, because the narrative strength of film itself will always be a priority.
CityBeat grade: B.
Agee on Film
Forty-five years after Agee's death, it's his books A Death in the Family and Let Us Now Praise Famous Men that most people remember. But Agee was a film reviewer as well as the author of several screenplays for his director-friend John Huston.
His reviews are nuggets of clean and passionate writing. His Dec. 26, 1942 introductory column to The Nation's readers is a good example: "I suspect that I am, far more than not, in your own situation: deeply interested in moving pictures, considerably experienced from childhood on in watching them and thinking and talking about them, and totally, or almost totally, without experience or even much secondhand knowledge of how they are made. If I am broadly right in this assumption, we start on the same ground, and under the handicaps, and I qualify to be here, if at all, only by two means. It is my business to conduct one end of a conversation, as an amateur critic among amateur critics. And I will be of use and of interest only in so far as my amateur judgment is sound, stimulating, or illuminating."
After reading Agee's clear writing, film fans should demand more from today's critics. For working critics like myself, he provides the most poignant inspiration -- Agee on Film is 442 pages of proof that film criticism doesn't need to be eggheaded or overly theoretical.
CityBeat grade: A.
Books like Memo from David O. Selznick and Agee on Film remind us that cinema stories aren't just for auteurist critics and geeky theoreticians. They can be lively accounts rich with human emotion.
A trip to the multiplex confirms the movies' status as a powerful engine of entertainment. Selznick and Agee help put a human face on the Hollywood machine. ©
