Negative Space: Manny Farber On The Movies PDF
Preview Negative Space: Manny Farber On The Movies
Praise 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
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