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Farber on Film: The Complete Film Writings of Manny Farber: A Library of America Special Publication Paperback – February 2, 2016
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Farber was an early discoverer of many filmmakers later acclaimed as American masters: Val Lewton, Preston Sturges, Samuel Fuller, Raoul Walsh, Anthony Mann. A prodigiously gifted painter himself, he brought to his writing an artist's eye for what was on the screen. Alert to any filmmaker, no matter how marginal or unsung, who was “doing go-for-broke art and not caring what comes of it,” he was uncompromising in his contempt for pretension and trendiness, for, as he put it, directors who “pin the viewer to the wall and slug him with wet towels of artiness and significance.”
The excitement of his criticism, however, has less to do with his particular likes and dislikes than with the quality of attention he paid to each film as it unfolds, to the “chains of rapport and intimate knowledge” in its moment-to-moment reality. To transcribe that knowledge he created a prose that, in Robert Polito's words, allows for “oddities, muddles, crises, contradictions, dead ends, multiple alternatives, and divergent vistas.” The result is critical essays that are themselves works of art.
Farber on Film brings together this extraordinary body of work in its entirety for the first time, from his early and previously uncollected weekly reviews for The New Republic and The Nation to his brilliant later essays (some written in collaboration with his wife Patricia Patterson) on Godard, Fassbinder, Herzog, Scorsese, Altman, and others. Featuring an introduction by editor Robert Polito that examines in detail the stages of Farber's career and his enduring significance as writer and thinker, Farber on Film is a landmark volume that will be a classic in American criticism.
- Print length824 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherLibrary of America
- Publication dateFebruary 2, 2016
- Dimensions6.1 x 1.61 x 9.2 inches
- ISBN-101598534696
- ISBN-13978-1598534696
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About the Author
Robert Polito, editor, is a poet, biographer, and critic whose books include Doubles, Hollywood & God, A Reader’s Guide to James Merrill’s The Changing Light at Sandover, and Savage Art: A Biography of Jim Thompson, for which he received a National Book Critics Circle Award and an Edgar Award. He directs the Graduate Writing Program at the New School in New York City.
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- Publisher : Library of America; Reprint edition (February 2, 2016)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 824 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1598534696
- ISBN-13 : 978-1598534696
- Item Weight : 2.35 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.1 x 1.61 x 9.2 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,387,101 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #646 in Movie Guides & Reviews
- #2,008 in Journalist Biographies
- #2,864 in Movie History & Criticism
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- Reviewed in the United States on December 1, 2009This is a long overdue collection of the complete film writings of one of the great film observers of all time. Manny Farber was much, much more than a film critic. He looked, really looked, at films in ways that no one else did during the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. He dissected films with a painter's eye, seeing what most everyone else missed. He looked at tough guy low budget movies. He looked at Hollywood big production films. He looked at foreign films and experimental films. He looked at cartoons.
And then he wrote. Farber wrote in a way that no one else did.
Farber started writing in the 1940s. His early reviews are still interesting as starting points before seeing the films he discusses. He had an uncanny knack for separating the fluff from substance and stopping great films and great directors long before others did (Hawks, Preston Sturges, Sam Fuller, Fassbinder, Herzog, and Michael Snow to name a few directors Farber championed). And he moved past mere plot summary and analysis to reviewing films in a whole new way.
This collection lets the reader watch Farber grow over time in his understanding of movies and in his writing. By the 1960s, he is writing essays(like his famous and influential "White Elephant Art vs. Termite Art). His later collaboration with Patricia Patterson, an artist and Farber's wife, resulted in pieces that are never short of brilliant.
Farber is at his best when he is pulling and pushing the reader through a maze of thoughts, imagines and word gymnastics to come out the other end of the essay with a whole new way of looking at things. To say that he is non-linear in this thought process is an understatement. Only a great writer like Farber can pull it off.
And then, he stopped writing about film in the 1970s to devote his remaining years to painting. He said all that he needed to say about film. And he said it in a way that no other writer has done before or since. (Yes, there are many who have tried to imitate his style, but it really can't be done.)
Reading a few pages of Farber is a revelation. Reading a book of Farber can change the way you see film, writing, and the role of the observer/critic in the world.
Congratulations to Library of America for the handsome edition it has published. (Note that it is larger than the typical book that they put out.)
- Reviewed in the United States on July 19, 2017A great book of reviews and essays from a long career. It helps to have a knowledge of film history, as he references some fairly obscure movies over the course of the collection.
- Reviewed in the United States on November 22, 2014I like Manny. I took a film class from him at UCSD. Entertaining and challenging. Got me interested on studying art.
- Reviewed in the United States on September 18, 2011This collection is supposed to be definitive, and it is (in the sense of collecting all of Manny Farber's film writings from the multitude of sources throughout his career, from The Nation and The New Republic in the 1940s, all the way to articles from Artforum and Film Comment in the 1960s and 1970s). But one problem was that in many of the original journals, the editing was sloppy, and there were mistakes, which have simply not been corrected and have simply been perpetuated into the future, as the Library of America continues its slipshod methodology of never having to say it's sorry. Mistakes and important omissions. For example: in a review of the experimental films of the Kinesis group from San Francisco, Farber mentions a filmmaker named "Gordon Belson". There has never been a "Gordon Belson", the name is JORDAN Belson (who just died in August of 2011). This mistake was made in the original review in The Nation of October 11, 1952; it should have been corrected, but how can it be corrected when the editors don't know this is a mistake? For example: in the introduction and the chronology, it is never mentioned that "Manny Farber's" name is Emanuel Farber. An entire book of over 800 pages, and there is no mention (at all) of Mr. Farber's actual name. What kind of editing is this? Aside from that, this is an exhilarating collection, because Manny Farber is one of the most iconoclastic and amusing critics the movies have ever had, a true original.
- Reviewed in the United States on January 29, 2013I had just found this book on Amazon and have not yet purched it. However, I have long been a fan of Farber and wanted to add some more positive comments to encoutage readers to discover one of the most original film critics America has ever produced.
Schopenhauer advised students not to let their teachers read their Kant for them. Unfortunately, many filmgoers do let their favorite critics watch their films for them. Many critics want to be authorities. Farber resists the regimenting of film experience and film tastes. He communicates the act and process of watching a film. I have learned more from him than any other film critic.
I discovered Farber when the anthology Negative Space was first published. At that time, Andrew Sarris was dominating the film scene in New York and possibly around the country. Sarris originized everything by cataloging good and bad director, major and minor films of each director, and a major and minor films by year. This game leads to people talking about films in broad categories rather than talking intelligently about what actually makes a film tick.
Farber probably will never gain the large following of critics who are looking for prestige but he deserves a wider audience simply because his much needed type of iconoclasm and his gifts of seeing each film anew might rub off on others.
Top reviews from other countries
- James S. McleanReviewed in Canada on February 9, 2021
5.0 out of 5 stars You won't find this level of film criticism anywhere else.
Farber's film writings are filled with acidic humour and insight that honed in on anything pretentious or dishonest or just plain incompetent. These short pieces of criticism will give the reader a fine appreciation for all that is good, bad or indifferent in film making. His sardonic observations will stay with me forever. For just one example, Farber said that Bogart in Casablanca looked like he was acting while holding back a mouthful of blood. His reviews were always honest, insightful and uncompromising. His reviews ended with the 1970's. Too bad. We need him more than ever. A bonus is a wonderful introduction by Jon Polito.
- GReviewed in the United Kingdom on May 27, 2016
1.0 out of 5 stars He could have been the driver of an articulated lorry, what a waste.
The Introduction tells us Manny Farber believed in description and to hell with psychological analysis and relating the plot. All good values that would recommend him to anyone tired of formulaic criticism.
But Farber's criticism relates plot, is not above phallic-symbol train-spotting, seldom describes anything, and has no fluency because he has no rhythm.
And he has no rhythm because he has no enthusiasm for cinema. He writes like he'd rather be writing about something else, or painting - - which he ended up doing, but not soon enough for my money.
He settles for trite judgements and shallow theme-spotting, and comes off like a narrow-minded square embittered by losing track of cinema's new generation in the Fifties yet continuing to write for 20 more years. If Richard Nixon had been a film critic in stead of a bent president, this is how he'd sound.
"STRANGERS ON A TRAIN is fun to watch if you check your intelligence at the box office." Farber prefers late-1920s Hitchcock - - and he prefers STRANGERS ON A TRAIN to PSYCHO.
Here's what he says about a classic shot from STRANGERS ON A TRAIN:
"He cuts away from a brutally believable strangulation to the concave image cast up by the lens of the victim's fallen spectacles. At once the onlooker loses interest in the murder as such because he is so entranced with the lush, shadowy choreographic lyricism with which Hitchcock shows the life being squeezed, fraction by fraction, out of a shallow, hateful nymphomaniac."
It doesn't occur to him that censors would never have allowed Hitchcock to film the strangulation head-on for as long as Farber wanted...but that aside, anyone who would prefer that over the spectacular optic that the scene is remembered for must be tired of cinema.
"Hateful nymphomaniac" is pushing the characterization of the victim for giving the guy a come-on, but it's a square's point of view. That sample sentence also gives you a sense of how cumbersome his writing can be: "with which" is one of his typical constructions, a hamfisted manipulation of what he's trying to say. "As such" is just as stolid. "...cast up by the lens of the victim's fallen spectacles..." there has to be a more succinct and fluent way to put that.
This fellow has no more talent for writing than he has for observation.
Listen to this beginning:
"ROOM AT THE TOP, an admirable (if not likeable) study..."
Even when he almost likes something,he can't let himself go and express enthusiasm without a disabling qualifier. He kills sentence after sentence and film after film like this for forty years.
Sometimes a writer can keep you interested and entertained even when expressing a judgement contrary to your own - - but this isn't one of those books.
Kael was good for that, but this overrated hack can't hold a candle to Pauline Kael - - even though Kael didn't fulfil her potential either.
I like a grouch: too many modern critics are made banal by looking for any dumb excuse to sound positive, scared to death of sounding negative about anything, perhaps scared of the sponsor. But there has to be intelligence and some fire in that approach.
Farber doesn't like THE GRADUATE; doesn't like BULLITT; doesn't like TAXI DRIVER; he's unimpressed by RIO BRAVO...but all that comes across is that the films are bigger than his imagination.
Excellent, original writers in film criticism and scholarship are so rare they barely exist. But I have no respect for readers who settle for this standard - - you get what you settle for and stay dumb that way - - and I don't respect writers who settle for putting this banal standard in print.
- Robert ‘Bob’ MacesperaReviewed in the United Kingdom on April 27, 2020
2.0 out of 5 stars Disapointing
This book has been praised by many. Surprisingly (to these eyes) by David Thomson, arguably the best cinema critic alive. Mr Thomson says in his magnum opus, "Biographical Dictionary of film”, that the publishing of this compillation of reviews by Manny Farber is a feast and a treasure for cinema buffs.
I beg to differ.
There are indeed good reviews (my fauvorite: From here to eternity, also good but rather incomplete, the long essay on Howard Hawks), but overall this is a disappointing book. Most of the reviews are tedious, written by someone who seemed to be only mildly interested in what he was writing, like being forced to complete a task. Moreover, the prose is poor, very poor. There are sentences coming out of nowehere, disconected, repetitive. It is literarily impossible to read more than 20 pages without getting bored - and it does take an effort to carry on with the reviews once we've picked and read already those of our favourite movies.
The book is only for cinema fanatics, to have as a fairly good complement to the paramount books and reviews of, say, Kael, Thomson, and other ones in that league. Unfortunatelly, Mr Farber, does not belong there.