James Agee: Film Writing and Selected Journalism (Library of America)

By James Agee

Book Overview

James Agee brought to bear all his moral energy, slashing wit, and boundless curiosity in the criticism and journalism that established him as one of the commanding literary voices of America at mid-century. In 1944 W. H. Auden called Agee's film reviews for The Nation "the most remarkable regular event in American journalism today." Those columns, along with much of the movie criticism that Agee wrote for Time through most of the 1940s, were collected posthumously in Agee on Film: Reviews and Comments, undoubtedly the most influential writings on film by an American. This Library of America volume supplements the classic pieces from Agee on Film with previously uncollected writings on Ingrid Bergman, the Marx Brothers, Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat, Vittorio De Sica's Shoeshine, and a wealth of other cinematic subjects.

Whether reviewing a Judy Garland musical or a wartime documentary, assessing the impact of Italian neorealism or railing against the compromises in a Hollywood adaptation of Hemingway, Agee always wrote of movies as a pervasive, profoundly significant part of modern life, a new art whose classics (Chaplin, Dovzhenko, Vigo) he revered and whose betrayal in the interests of commerce or propaganda he often deplored. If his frequent disappointments could be registered in acid tones, his enthusiasms were expressed with passionate eloquence.

Agee's own work as a screenwriter is represented by his script for Charles Laughton's unique and haunting masterpiece of Southern gothic, The Night of the Hunter, adapted from the novel by Davis Grubb. This collection also includes examples of Agee's masterfully probing reporting for Fortune--on subjects as diverse as the Tennessee Valley Authority, commercial orchids, and cockfighting--and a sampling of his literary reviews, among them appreciations of William Faulkner, Virginia Woolf, S. J. Perelman, and William Carlos Williams.

LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation's literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America's best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1931082820
• ISBN13: 9781931082822
• Release Date: September 2005
• Publisher: Library of America
• Length: 748 Pages
• Weight: 1.17 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.2" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

Insightful, Inspired, Kind

James Agee was the first film critic, that I know of, who percieved and prophesied the poetic power of images on film. After reading his addictive reviews and enjoying his rich and witty prose the reader will know a lot about Agee the man, his sensitivities, his ideals and his prejudices. Anyone interested in film from the 1940's or film criticism in general should really own this book. An excerpt: "During the long climax these clashings blend in such a way that the picture, faults and all, soars along one of the rarest heights possible to art-the height from which it is seen that the whole race, including the observer, is to be pitied, laughed at, and revered for its delusions of personal competence for good, evil, or mere survival, as it sleepwalks along ground which continuously opens bottomless chasms beneath the edges of its feet." Obviously these are not simply movie reviews, they are personal essays on the topic of film revealing a sensitive humanist and visionary of the latent power of images.

Film Writing and Selected Journalism

Includes the classic Agee on Film as well as the screenplay for the classic, chilling Night of the Hunter, this is a must read for film fans of the WWII era. Never shy to express an opinion, Agee wrote with great passion and intellegence about the films of the period. I was esp. impressed with the features he wrote for the fledgling perodical - The Nation. When he discovered a film he liked, he would delve into great detail on what interested him in the work (sometimes pieces would continue from one issue into the next). I also appreciated his willingness to say that a film touched a particular interest in him and might not be to the taste of all readers (can you imagine a critic doing that today - actually putting him or herself out there as just another spectator as opposed to a critical god....) As with the theatrical writings of Ken Tynan - a treasure.