Sleeping with Strangers: How the Movies Shaped Desire

Part personal moviegoing memoir, part deeply informed film history, this allusively titled study from critic Thomson (Television: A Biography) is concerned with “beauty on screen, desire in our heads, and the alchemy they make in the dark.” Pondering eroticism as it is encoded, both overtly and subliminally, into popular movies, Thomson considers how the past century of filmmaking has interwoven “macho confidence, feminine personality, and gay wit.” He includes chapters on the careers of such well-known sex symbols as Cary Grant, Jean Harlow, and Rudolph Valentino, as well as extended studies of less-heralded personnel, among them costumiers Travis Banton and Edith Head, who outfitted actors in numerous films for maximum sex appeal. His coverage extends from specific films, such as Bonnie and Clyde, that bristle with sexual tension to entire genres, such as, unexpectedly, monster movies (which he credits for helping to reveal that most movie characters “are fantasy incarnate”) and to odd-couple films (which he says demonstrate that “attraction can exist in enmity as easily as in love”). Thomson deploys his encyclopedic knowledge of film so genially and dexterously that readers who are movie aficionados will want to rewatch their favorites through his eyes.[em] (Feb.) [/em]