Farber on Film: The Complete Film Writings of Manny Faber: A Special Publication of the Library of America

1309 Pages·2016·7.36 MB·English

by  Farber

FARBER ON FILM
The Complete Film Writings of Manny Farber
Edited by
Robert Polito
A SPECIAL PUBLICATION OF THE LIBRARY OF AMERICA
Copyright © 2009 by The Estate of Manny Farber. Introduction, volume
compilation, notes, and chronology copyright © 2009 by Robert Polito. All
rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced commercially by offset-
lithographic or equivalent copying devices without the permission of the
publisher.
For an explanation of this volume’s editorial policy, see the Sources &
Acknowledgments.
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eISBN 978-1-59853-470-2
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION: OTHER ROADS, OTHER TRACKS
1942–1947
With Camera and Gun
Three’s a Crowd
The Little Fellow
Gabin in Hollywood
Blaboteur
The Naked Truth
Not by the Book
War Horses
Hollywood Blues
Saccharine Symphony
The Grapes, Alas
True and False
Gehrig to Cooper to Chance
Twice Over Heavily
A British Movie Biography
Real War
The Logic of Lunacy
Memorandum for Hollywood
Black Tails and White Lies
Fiction and Fact
The Movie Art
Between Two Worlds
The Journey, Cont.
Witches’ Brew
The Warner Boys in Africa
Preston Sturges: Satirist
Movie of the Year
Children’s War
Mystery Movie
Our Town
History and Hollywood
Hitchcock in Stride
Wartime Documentaries
The Heroes of the Mary Ann
To What Base Uses
Native Fascist, MGM Style
The Too Beautiful People
Young Mr. Pitt
“The Hard Way”
Zanuck at the Front
One for the Ages
The Trouble with Movies
Writers as Producers
The Nazis Again
Mishmash
Let Us Now Praise Movies
Less Talk and More Mail
Education for War
The Trouble With Movies: II
The Sea Without Salt
The Expendables
Columbia Cooler
The Great White Way
Between Two Words
Tinkle
When the Pie Was Opened
The Production Line
Method in Its Badness
Tessa’s Last Stand?
Seeing Zero
Not So Sound as Furious
Parting Is Such Sweet Sorrow
Short and Happy
Love in the Foxholes
Exterior Decorating
Russian Victory
The Hero
The Perils of Tartu
Whimsy Gets the Whammy
The Cardboard Star
Two Shorts and a Wrongo
Newsreel
Heaven, American Style
“The Cross of Lorraine”
Movies in Wartime
Earth on Heaven
Among the Missing: Hitchcock
Pow, Bam and Sock
Theatrical Movies
The Happiness Boys
The Great Cardboard Event
Two Phantoms
B Plus
Hate for Sale
Men in Battle
The Lady and the Belle
Up from Slavery
The Great Brain Robbery
Fathers and Songs
Personnel Department
Creep House
Boys in the Back Room
Quick Dissolve
Andersen’s Fairy Tale
The Unholy Three
Three New Ones
Warners’ Boys in the Balkans
Home Sweet Home
Hard-as-Nails Dept.
The Water’s Fine
It Comes Up Corn
For He’s a Jolly, Good Fellow
To Be and Not to Be
Independents’ Day
The Straight and Narrow
Against the Grain
More Notes on Newsreels
Marie the Magician
Murdered Movie
The Red and the Black
The Miracle of Morton
B-Plus
Rich Creamy Lather
Flesh and Enamel
To Have and Have Not
The Case of the Hidden Camera
Day of Reckoning
Just Plain Folks
Crazy Over Horses
Fact and Application
The Gold Rush
Crime Does Pay
Close Shave in Burma
The Brooklyn Dodger
Petrified Youth
Through Thin and Thick
Returning Soldiers
Sweet and Low
Four Flats
Dream Furlough
Skin Deep
Signs of the Double-Cross
Seven Who Were Harangued
Plenty of Nothin’
War Without Glamour
Gag Rule
The Hard Way
Postwar Movies
Coat of Navy Goo
The Hour of Charm
Renoir on Tenant Farmers
Dark Victory
Psychological Melodrama
Suburban Badlands
Drooping Spirits
Dream Manors
Liquor Flicker
Hamburger Hell
Make Mine Muzak
Crime Without Passion
French Primitive
Olivier’s “Henry V”
“Open City”
At Home Abroad
Hellman’s Movietone News
Iverstown Slaughter
Hollywood Barnum
Journey into the Night
Caper of the Week
Middle-Aged Fling
Maya Deren’s Films
“The Well-Digger’s Daughter”
Very Sweet Sixteen
Twisted Terry
Paranoia Unlimited
Nervous from the Service
Never Sharp
Portrait of the Artist
Dixie Corn
Stranglers and Toreadors
Mugging Main Street
1949–1954
Fight Films