Table Of ContentPraise for Manny Farber
"Manny Farber is the liveliest, smartest, most original film critic
this country ever produced. Maybe that's because he wasn't a
film critic only but was-is a wonderful painter. Farber's mind
and eye change the way you see." -SW1au Sontag
"The film history professor who introduced me to Negative Space
specifically cautioned us against 'trying to write like Manny Far
ber.' I ignored this advice and continue to. If America were Ja
pan, Farber would long since have been declared a National
Treasure, a true sensei of popular culture. He grasps and ex
presses the deep language of cinema more surely and with
greater prehensile glee than any writer I've ever read. Negative
Space is my favorite book about what films are, and why, and
how they do what they do. I'm very happy to see it return to
print in this new and brilliantly expanded edition." ·
-Will.ism Gibson, author of Neuromancer and ldoru
"Farber brought to critical writing a wholly original sense of the
American narrative cinema and its place in film culture, thereby
anticipating by two decades the French New Wave's radical revi
sion of the film canon. For those who, like myself, were first in
troduced to film criticism as a serious enterprise by Farber's
brilliantly observed accounts of neglected works and by his ana
lytic dismissal of established mediocrity, the sureness of his
judgments and the compact vivacity of his prose remain singu
lar, exemplary, the most exciting we have."
-AnnP,tte Michelson, Professor of Cinema Studies,
New York University, and coeditor of October
"Farber is cranky and eccentric, razor-sharp in his perceptions,
irritable and irritating, never less than brilliant as a writer, and
one of the precious few American critics who encourage the mak
ing of movies as opposed to cinema, and probably the last one
who champions a lack of pretense in the art he likes."
-Peter Bogdanovich
"Manny Farber is one of the few movie critics who have mat
tered in this country. He has shaped and sharpened the sensi
bilities of two generations of people who care about film. Cer-
tainly he was the first to think seriously and coherently about
the American action film, thereby creating an aesthetic that al
lowed us to fully apprehend, for the first time, our native genius
for movie-making. Farber set in motion a revolution in our
tastes and perceptions that is still proceeding. ... He is the fa
ther of us all." -Richard Schickel
"A Titan, a champion of American action movies long before
many of the current French or American Olympians of film criti
cism first came on the scene. ... An almost paranoid conviction
and brilliance." -Richard Locke, New York Tfmes
"There are only two critics in English who write on Hollywood
film with perception and inspiration: Manny Farber and Andrew
Sarris. ... He has been a champion of personal cinema for years,
and he has championed it in a very personal, persuasive, and
compelling style of his own." Jonas Mekas
"A gem. ... As alive with stunning images, original metaphors,
and unexpected twists as the films Farber brings to life with his
condensed, electric prose. ... His views are unorthodox, in
tensely personal, and reverberating with excitement and contro
versy." -Barbara Rose, W>gue
'
"In the list of American film critics, Manny Farber is one of the
handful of essential names." -Wilfrid Sheed
"Manny Farber is an impossibly eccentric movie critic whose
salvoes have a disturbing tendency to land on target. I often dis
agree with him but I always learn from him."
-Dwight Macdonald
"What makes Farber a great movie critic is first and foremost a
freshness and sensitivity of response to the medium itself. He
watches a film not as a disguised novel, play or tract but as a
movie. He knows that before art is anything else it is experi
ence, and what is exciting about his writing is his ability to
evoke the mysterious experience of film .... Farber's language is
of a piece with his sensual clarity and moral stringency ... a
fabulous, homegrown American style that leaps from elbowing
eccentricity to a brilliant skeet-shooting explosion of feeling and
thought." Jack Kroll, Newsweek
Manny Farber on the Movies
Expanded Edition
New Preface by Robert Walsh
DA CAPO PRESS • NEW YORK
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Farber, Manny.
Negative space: Manny Farber on the movies / new preface by Robert
Walsh.-Expanded ed.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-306-80829-3 (alk. paper)
1. Motion pictures Reviews. I. Title.
PN1995.F28 1998
791.43'09 dc21 98-5486
CIP
First Da Capo Press edition 1998
This Da Capo Press paperback edition of Negative Space is an expanded
edition of the one first published in New York in 1971, with the addition
of eight essays new to this edition, and a new preface by Robert Walsh.
It is reprinted by arrangement with the author.·
Copyright© 1971 by Manny Farber
Expanded edition © 1998 by Manny Farber
New preface © 1998 by Robert Walsh
Published by Da Capo Press, Inc.
A Subsidiary of Plenum Publishing Corporation
233 Spring Street, New York, N.Y. 10013
All Rights Reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Grat.eful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint the following
articles. Original titles, where different from those used in this volume, are
given in parenthesis.
"The Gimp" ("Movies Aren't Movies Anymore"), "Underground Films," "The
Decline of the Actor" ("The Fading Movie Star"): reprinted from Commentary
with permission;© 1952, 1957, 1963, by the American Jewish Committee.
"White Elephant Art vs. 'Thrmite Art": repnnted from Film Culture maga
zine with permission.
"Preston Sturges: Success in the Movies": reprinted from City Lights,
1954, with permission.
"Rain in the Face, Dry Gulch, and Squalling Mouth," "Day of the
Lesteroid," "The Cold That Came into The Spy," "Pish-Tush": reprinted from
Cavalier magazine with permission.
"Short and Happy": reprinted by permission of The New Republic, © 1951,
Harrison-Blaine, of New Jersey, Inc.
"Nearer My Agee to Thee": reprinted from The New Leader with pennis-
•
s1on.
"Blame the Audience": © Commonweal Publishing Co., Inc.
"Home of the Brave," a section of "Parade Floats" ("The Quiet Man"), "The
Third Man," "Detective Story," "In the Street," "John Huston," "Val Lewton,"
"Frank Capra," "'Best Films' of 1951," "Ugly Spotting," "Fight Films": re
printed from The Nation, 1949, 1950, 1951, 1952, with permission.
"Hard-Sell Cinema": reprinted from Perspectives, 1957.
The following appeared as untitled film reviews in Artforum: "The Sub
verters" (Dec. 1966), New York Film Festival essays (Nov. 1967; Nov. 1968;
Dec. 1968; Nov. 1969), "Cartooned Hip Acting" (Dec. 1967), "How I Won the
War" (Jan. 1968), "Experimental Films" (Feb. 1968), "One-to-One" (March
1968), "La Chinoise" (Summer 1968), "Belle de Jour" (Summer 1968), "Car
bonated Dyspepsia" (Sept. 1968), "Jean-Luc Godard" (Oct. 1968), "Canadian
Underground," (Jan. 1969), "Shame," (Feb. 1969), "Howard Hawks" (April
1969), the second section of "Parade Floats" (May 1969), "Luis Buiiuel"
(Summer 1969), "Samuel Fuller," (Sept. 1969), "Don Seigel" (Dec. 1969), "Mi
chael Snow" (Jan. 1970), "Raoul Walsh: 'He Used to be a Big Shot'" (Nov.
1971): reprinted from Artforum with permission.
"Werner Herzog," "Nicolas Roeg": reprinted from City.
"Fassbinder," "New York Film Festival-1975": reprinted from City and
Film Comment, © 1975, The Film Society of Lincoln Center, with permission.
"The Power and the Gory," "Kitchen Without Kitsch," "Manny Farber and
Patricia Patterson Interviewed by Richard Thompson": reprinted from Film
Comment,© 1976, 1977, The Film Society of Lincoln Center, with pennis-
•
8100.
This book is dedicated to the New Yorker Theater,
where the movie sometimes equaled the grace and style of the
theater's staff: Dan, Jose, Frank, and Dan's mother-in-law.
This particular path of criticism is strewn with victims of my
deadline miseries. Those who have bled most profusely over the
years deserve more than this tepid recognition. From the pre
sent, going back in time, I am extremely grateful to an army:
Patricia Patterson, Robert Walsh, Jean-Pierre Gorin, Rick
Thompson, Tom Luddy, Gregory Ford, his mother, Donald Phelps
(night and day), Duncan Shepherd, Phil Leider, John
Hochmann, Marjorie Farber, Marsha Picker, Jerry Tallmer, Vir
ginia Admiral, Margaret Marshall, Janet Richards, Betty Hul
ing, and, for special assistance, Pauline Kael, Annette
Michelson, and the Guggenheim Foundation.
· ·-- C CSP · -., .,.. ...
Preface by Robert Walsh •
lX
Introduction
3
Underground Films 12
Howard Hawks 25
John Huston
32
The Third Man 38
Detective Story 42
In the Street
45
Val Lewton 47
Short and Happy 51
Blame the Audience
54
"Best Films" of 1951 58
Ugly Spotting 61
Fight Films 64
Home of the Brave 68
The Gimp 71
Nearer My Agee to Thee 84
Preston Sturges: Success in the Movies 89
(written with W. S. Poster)
Frank Capra 105
Parade Floats 108
Hard-Sell Cinema 113
Don Siegel 125
Samuel Fuller 129
White Elephant Art vs. Ter1nite Art 134
The Decline of the Actor 145
Cartooned Hip Acting 155
Day of the Lesteroid 160
The Wizard of Gauze 165
The Cold That Came into The Spy 170
••
VII
I
viii Contents
Rain in the Face, Dry Gulch, and Squalling Mouth 175
Pish-Tush 180
The Subverters 184
Carbonated Dyspepsia 188
One-to-One 195
How I Won the War 200
Clutter 205
Shame 222
New York Film Festival-1967 225
New York Film Festival-1968 230
New York Film Festival-1968, Afterthoughts 235
New York Film Festival-1969 241
Experimental Films 246
Canadian Underground 250
Michael Snow 256
Jean-Luc Godard 259
La Chinoise and Belle de Jour 269
Luis Buiiuel 275
Raoul Walsh 282
Nicolas Roeg 291
Werner Herzog 300
Rainer Werner Fassbinder 307
New York Film Festival-1975 315
The Power and the Gory 326
Kitchen Without Kitsch 339
Manny Farber and Patricia Patterson 349
Interviewed by Richard Thompson
Index 393
