Genre Studies.pdf

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Genre Studies
Author(s): John Fell, Ernest Callenbach and Don Willis
Source:
Film Quarterly,
Vol. 34, No. 4 (Summer, 1981), pp. 52-53
Published by:
University of California Press
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http://www.jstor.org/stable/1212173
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52
as in Stars in My Crown and the fragmentary I Walked
With a Zombie. Auteurists may be most struck by Wille-
men's observation that ". . . the notion that a particular
piece of work constitutes the self-expression of an indi-
vidual always has distinctly excremental overtones. The
individual in question presses something out of himself/
herself which he/she then deposits on a piece of paper
or on the screen. . ." After that, Tourneur's modest
moments of personal pride in his work, described in a
final interview, sound quite unintentionally self-reve-
latory.-J.F.
Leaming, Barbara. Grigori Kozintsev. Boston: Twayne
Publishers, 1981. $14.95. Leaming explores the thought-
ful and original work of a director too little known in
the west-except through his impressive King Lear. (His
diary kept during the planning and shooting of that
work, a rich and moving document of creative pains-
taking, is available as King Lear: The Space of Tragedy.)
But Kozintzev spanned the whole history of Soviet
film-making, from the tumultuous avant-garde of the
twenties through the Zhdanovist horrors (The Youth
of Maxim, which he made with Leonid Trauberg, was
a triumph of then new Socialist Realism but also a
portent of disaster) and into the post-1956 "thaw."
A pioneering and sympathetic book about a remarkable
film-maker.-E.C.
Maland, Charles. Frank Capra. Boston: Twayne, 1980.
$10.95. A survey of Capra's career from the early silents
onward, with special attention to It's a Wonderful Life.
-E.C.
McGerr, Celia. Rene Clair. Boston: Twayne, 1980. An
amiable if brief survey of Clair's work, which may help
to revive interest in this consummate cinematic crafts-
man; pays close attention to the delicate formality of
Clair's style, and traces the thematic concerns that
animated his work.-E.C.
O'Leary, Liam. Rex Ingram: Master of the Silent Cin-
ema. Totowa, NJ: Barnes & Noble, 1980. $28.50. This
carefully researched biography by an Irish critic and
historian contains interesting side material on Hollywood
in the twenties, including interviews with von Stroheim
and Alice Terry. A reader may finally conclude that
Ingram's talents exceeded his film accomplishments.
The filmography has synopses of each production.-J.F.
Parrill, William. Heroes' Twilight: The Films of Sam
Peckinpah. Bay-Wulf Books, 109 S. Cate Ave., Ham-
mond, LA 70401, 1981. $6.95 paper. Written before
Paul Seydor's excellent book on Peckinpah, this work
is a series of compact essays defending Peckinpah, mostly
in terms of plot and theme analysis.-E.C.
Poague, Leland. The Hollywood Professionals, v. 7:
Wilder & McCarey. New York: Barnes, 1980. The two
essays are determinedly loyal. Wilder's over-critiqued
FILM
BOOKS
cynicism is but the underside of romanticism. McCarey's
My Son John is evenhandedly fair to all parties. Poague's
familiarity with the many films seems thorough, and the
McCarey filmography goes back to the Charley Chases
and Laurel and Hardys.-J.F.
Rayns, Tony, ed. Fassbinder. London: British Film
Institute, 1980. New York Zoetrope. $17.50 cloth,
$8.25 paperback. This revised edition contains two new
essays (Richard Dyer and Thomas Thieringer), more
interview material, changes and afterwords incorporated
in other articles, and its filmography is adjusted up to
1979.-J.F.
Sandford, John. The New German Cinema. Totowa, NJ:
Barnes & Noble, 1980. $25.75. A readable introduction
to the major film-makers and their themes (less strong
on visual styles).-E.C.
Walsh, Gene, ed. "Images at the Horizon." New York:
New York Zoetrope, 1980. $4.00 paper. Annotated
transcriptions of a Werner Herzog workshop held in
Chicago during April, 1979. As one might expect,
Herzog is candid, imaginative, and funny. He talks at
some length about Bruno S., and he found the citizens
of Plainfield, Wisconsin, where Stroszek was filmed,
especially dangerous. "If you ask me to say who is the
most important filmmaker here in this country, I would
say, 'It's Griffith . . . and Griffith . . . and Griffith . . .
and Griffith again.' "-J.F.
Genre
Studies
Druxman, Michael B. The Musical: From Broadway
to Hollywood. Cranbury, NJ: Barnes 1980. $17.50.
Finch, Christopher. Walt Disney's America. New York:
Abbeville, 1978. Disneyana structured around the
United States as a formative influence (Kansas City,
Middle America) on Walt, and then Walt as a power
of his own ("as American as Donald Duck"). Pictures
include memorabilia, cels, live-action stills, and shots
from Disneyland. Most interesting are the animation
layout drawings and background paintings.-J.F.
Glut, Donald F. Classic Movie Monsters. Metuchen,
NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1978. A follow-up to Glut's The
Frankenstein Legend and The Dracula Book, this one
covers, most thoroughly, mummies, werewolves, invisi-
ble men, King Kong, etc. in film and print, but incom-
prehensibly neglects such sub-genres as the were-tiger
film (e.g., PRC's all-but-forgotten Tiger Fangs, 1943)
and the giant-crab movie (Port Sinister. Attack of the
Crab Monsters and Mysterious Island are prominent
titles in this area). Next time perhaps?-DON WILLIS
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JSTOR Terms and Conditions
FILM
BOOKS
Manvell, Roger. Art and Animation. New York: Hast-
ings House, 1980. $26.50. An illustrated tribute to the
team of Halas & Batchelor, with filmography.-E.C.
Meyers, Richard. The World of Fantasy Films. So.
Brunswick: Barnes, 1980. $17.50. A roundup of horror,
science fiction, and fantasy films released in the last
four or five years. Plus sections on television and anima-
tion. Indifferently written but pretty thorough.
-DON WILLIS
Murphy, Michael J. The Celluloid Vampires: A History
and Filmography, 1897-1979. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Pier-
ian Press, 1979. $14.95. Roughly 200 pages of history
and synopses and 150 pages of filmography, the latter
exhaustive but a bit disorganized-some films are
listed more than once, under different titles, and
projects, announced titles, and completed films are all
lumped together.-DON WILLIS
Stoker, John. The Illustrated Frankenstein. New York:
Sterling Publishing Co. 1980. $6.95 paper. Though this
has the appearance of an ordinary fan-oriented book, its
text is actually a thoughtfully written and carefully
researched survey of the origins in Mary Shelley's novel
and the subsequent complex cascade of dramatizations
on stage, film, and tube.-E.C.
53
essays tracing American film from Alexander Black's
lantern slide picture plays up until Leo the Lion suspi-
ciously eyes a carbon mike, the text for Hollywood The
Pioneers derives largely from Brownlow's (and David
Gill's) 13-part television series. These programs skill-
fully combine old footage with seventies interviews, and
excerpts from pioneer memories enliven the book. Even
so, a printed page hardly betrays the nuances of, say,
Viola Dana, who was engaged to stuntman-aviatorOrmer
Locklear and witnessed his death in a tailspin. "I do
remember that my hair started to fall out-I could pull
it out in clumps, the shock was so great. I guess I was just
kind of crazy. I couldn't believe what had happened.
When you're young, those things are very shocking. I
don't even like to talk about it."
What further supports Brownlow's book in magnifi-
cent display are the photographs provided by his co-
author, John Kobol. Largely produced by studio still
cameramen, they are printed in a dark, rich sepia, often
bled to
81/2
by 10 inch page size, sometimes falling
across the fold to a facing page, their dark extremes
slipping into black, the whites contouringcumulus-topped
seascapes (White Shadows of the South Seas) or icicles
(Go West) or flesh behind scanty costume (Betty Blythe
in The Queen of Sheba). The illustrations capture silent
film's opulence far better than today's ravaged prints:
cleaner, sharper, better grey-scaled, fuller detailed. The
eye lingers leisurely on sets, costumes, and expressions
whose washed-out, morbid, fifth-generation children
-J.F.
scurry across today's movie screens.
Chanan, Michael. Labour Power in the British Film
Industry. London. British Film Institute, 1976. Avail-
able from New York Zoetrope. In this 57-page mono-
graph, Chanan traces what he views as the separation
of labor during Britain's earliest film history into divided
but creative technological specialties. From this exam-
ple, he posits a notion of aesthetic labor, i.e., work
creatively rooted in aesthetic production, and argu-
mentatively locates the idea centrally in Marx's theory
of production. The remainder of the pamphlet docu-
ments union organization, often in the face of American
domination, up until the projectionist's strike of 1938.
Interesting points emerge, such as the fact that no
British cameraman was employed to shoot a color film
before the Second World War. The work is marked
by concise expression, candor, and strong commit-
ment.-J.F.
Clarens, Carlos. Crime Movies An Illustrated History.
New York and London: Norton, 1980. $16.95. Toward
the end of his book, Clarens bemoans in films like The
Parallax View a final breakdown of systemic polarities
such as good/evil, right/wrong, true/false, and inside
society/inside society. Antagonist blends into the estab-
lishment. The protagonist of a noble cause (Telefon)
proves no more worthy and probably less ingratiating
History
Barnouw, Erik and S. Krishnaswamy. Indian Film.
New York: Oxford, 1980. This second edition updates
material since the original 1963 publication.-J.F.
Basten, Fred E. Glorious Technicolor: The Movies'
Magic Rainbow. South Brunswick: Barnes, 1980. An
affectionate history of Herbert Thomas Kalmus and his
successes which develops into descriptions of Hollywood's
high-budgeted colored features. There are six color
plates of early Technicolor productions and several of
pretty actresses, but most of the book is unfortunately
black and white. Contains a Technicolor filmography
1917-1979 and a short descriptionof the technique.-J.F.
Browne, Colin. Motion Picture Production in British
Columbia: 1898-1940. Victoria: British Columbia Pro-
vincial Museum, 1979. This comprehensive catalogue
describes more than a thousand films in which British
Columbia serves either as location or subject matter:
features, promotional ventures, travelogues, government
productions, Kinemacolor experiments, newsreels and
quota quickies, designed to qualify for exhibition in
Great Britain. An historical essay by Browne details
the circumstances of the films, and the book's index
serves well as a subject heading cross-index.-J.F.
Brownlow, Kevin and John Kobol. Hollywood The Pio-
nleers. New York: Knopf. 1979. $20.00. A series of mini-
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