Movie Love In The Fifties
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"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
James Harvey is a playwright, essayist, critic, and author several books on the movies. His most recent work has appeared in the New York Review of Books and the Threepenny Review. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.