Watching Them Be: Star Presence on the Screen from Garbo to Balthazar - Brossura

Harvey, James

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0865478325 ISBN 13: 9780865478329

Casa editrice: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2015

Riassunto

An intimate, thought-provoking exploration of the mysteries of "star presence" in cinema

"'One does not go to see them act,' wrote James Baldwin about the great iconicmovie stars Wayne and Davis and Bogart, 'one goes to watch them be' . . . Of course. It seems obvious . . . Where else besides the movies do you get to see other persons so intimately, so pressingly, so largely even? Where else such intense and close, such sustained and searching looks as you have of these strangers on the screen, whoever they really are? In life you try not to stare; but at the movies that's exactly what you get to do, two hours or more--safely, raptly, even blissfully."

It's this sort of amplified, heightened, sometimes transcendent "seeing" that James Harvey explores inWatching Them Be. Marvelously vivid and perceptive, and impressively erudite, this is his take on how aura is communicated in movies. Beginning where Roland Barthes left off with the face of Greta Garbo and ending with Robert Bresson'sAu hasard Balthazar, Harvey moves nimbly and expertly through film history, celebrating actors and directors who have particularly conveyed a feeling of transcendence.
From Marlene Dietrich to John Wayne to Robert De Niro, from Nashville to Jackie Brown to Masculine Feminine and the implicitly or explicitly religious films of Roberto Rossellini and Carl Theodor Dreyer, this is one man's personal, deeply felt account of the films that have changed his life. They will also, Harvey suggests, change yours.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Farrar Straus & Giroux
• Data di pubblicazione: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0865478325
• ISBN 13: 9780865478329
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 380