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A Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year, chosen by Tom Stoppard "A revelation."—Marc Weingarten, Washington Post Acclaimed film director Billy Wilder’s early writings—brilliantly translated into English for the first time Before Billy Wilder became the screenwriter and director of iconic films like Sunset Boulevard and Some Like It Hot, he worked as a freelance reporter, first in Vienna and then in Weimar Berlin. Billy Wilder on Assignment brings together more than fifty articles, translated into English for the first time, that Wilder (then known as "Billie") published in magazines and newspapers between September 1925 and November 1930. From a humorous account of Wilder's stint ...
Casablanca is "not one movie," Umberto Eco once quipped, "it is 'movies'".Released in 1942, the film won 4 Oscars, including Best Picture and featured unforgettable performances by Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman.The book offers a rich account of the film's origins, the myths and realities behind its production, and the reasons it remains so revered today.Through extensive research and interviews with film-makers, Noah Isenberg explores he ways in which the film continues to dazzle audiences and saturate popular culture 75 years after its release.
Edgar G. Ulmer is perhaps best known today for Detour, considered by many to be the epitome of a certain noir style that transcends its B-list origins. But in his lifetime he never achieved the celebrity of his fellow Austrian and German ŽmigrŽ directorsÑBilly Wilder, Otto Preminger, Fred Zinnemann, and Robert Siodmak. Despite early work with Max Reinhardt and F. W. Murnau, his auspicious debut with Siodmak on their celebrated Weimar classic People on Sunday, and the success of films like Detour and Ruthless, Ulmer spent most of his career as an itinerant filmmaker earning modest paychecks for films that have either been overlooked or forgotten. In this fascinating and well-researched acc...
In this comprehensive companion to Weimar cinema, chapters address the technological advancements of each film, their production and place within the larger history of German cinema, the style of the director, the actors and the rise of the German star, and the critical reception of the film.
Long considered an unpolished gem of film noir, the private treasure of film buffs, cinephiles and critics, Edgar G. Ulmer's Detour (1945) has recently earned a new wave of recognition. In the words of film critic David Thomson, it is simply 'beyond remarkable.' The only B-picture to make it into the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress, Detour has outrun its fate as the bastard child of one of Hollywood's lowliest studios. Ulmer's film follows, in flashback, the journey of Al Roberts (Tom Neal), a pianist hitching from New York to California to join his girlfriend Sue (Claudia Drake), a singer gone to seek her fortune in Hollywood. In classic noir style, Detour features mysteri...
Between Redemption and Doom is a revelatory exploration of the evolution of German-Jewish modernism. Through an examination of selected works in literature, theory, and film, Noah Isenberg investigates the ways in which Jewish identity was represented in German culture from the eve of the First World War through the rise of National Socialism. He argues that various responses to modernity?particularly to its social, cultural, and aesthetic currents?converge around the discourse on community: its renaissance, its crisis, and its dissolution. ø Isenberg opens with a general discussion of German modernism?its primary forms, movements, and manifestations. Subsequent chapters on Franz Kafka and ...
Challenges the notion that Weimar Jews sought to be invisible or indistinguishable from other Germans by "passing" as non-Jews
A film-centric portrait of the extraordinarily gifted movie director whose decades-long influence on American popular culture is unprecedented Everything about me is in my films, Steven Spielberg has said. Taking this as a key to understanding the hugely successful moviemaker, Molly Haskell explores the full range of Spielberg s works for the light they shine upon the man himself. Through such powerhouse hits as Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T., Jurassic Park, and Indiana Jones, to lesser-known masterworks like A.I. and Empire of the Sun, to the haunting Schindler s List, Haskell shows how Spielberg s uniquely evocative filmmaking and story-telling reveal the many ways in which his life, work, and times are entwined. Organizing chapters around specific films, the distinguished critic discusses how Spielberg s childhood in non-Jewish suburbs, his parents traumatic divorce, his return to Judaism upon his son s birth, and other events echo in his work. She offers a brilliant portrait of the extraordinary director a fearful boy living through his imagination who grew into a man whose openness, generosity of spirit, and creativity have enchanted audiences for more than 40 years.
“Marvelously entertaining, exciting and informative.” —Guardian “An engaging and accessible history.” —New York Review of Books This group biography is “an exhilarating page-turner” and “outstanding critical introduction” to the work and legacy of the Frankfurt School, and the great 20th-century thinkers who created it (Washington Post). In 1923, a group of young radical German thinkers and intellectuals came together to at Victoria Alle 7, Frankfurt, determined to explain the workings of the modern world. Among the most prominent members of what became the Frankfurt School were the philosophers Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Herbert Marcuse. Not onl...
Hollywood in the 1920s sparkled with talent, confidence, and opportunity. Enter Irving Thalberg of Brooklyn, who survived childhood illness to run Universal Pictures at twenty; co-found Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer at twenty-four; and make stars of Lon Chaney, Norma Shearer, Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Clark Gable, and Jean Harlow. Known as Hollywood's "Boy Wonder," Thalberg created classics such as Ben-Hur, Tarzan the Ape Man, Grand Hotel, Freaks, Mutiny on the Bounty, and The Good Earth, but died tragically at thirty-seven. His place in the pantheon should have been assured, yet his films were not reissued for thirty years, spurring critics to question his legend and diminish his achievements. In this definitive biography, illustrated with rare photographs, Mark A. Vieira sets the record straight, using unpublished production files, financial records, and correspondence to confirm the genius of Thalberg's methods. In addition, this is the first Thalberg biography to utilize both his recorded conversations and the unpublished memoirs of his wife, Norma Shearer. Irving Thalberg is a compelling narrative of power and idealism, revealing for the first time the human being behind the legend.