This provocative collection of essays—written over a 16-year period—offers unique insight into personalities as varied as Alfred Hitchcock and Bing Crosby. O'Brien, a New York Times, Village Voice
and New York Review of Books
contributor, defines his commitment to film with hypnotic intensity when he states, "[b]ack in my movie-ridden adolescence, when in the company of a band of fellow obsessives I shunted from double features to late late shows." The chapter "Touch of Ego" paints Orson Welles as a man in rigid control of his own image, simultaneously involved in his artistic efforts and removed from them. O'Brien analyzes the complexity of director John Ford with equal depth, and astutely observes the free-spirited joy of screwball comedies and their destruction by postwar emphasis on realism and domesticity. Walter Winchell, "the inventor of gossip as a form of mass-market entertainment," is not the one-note monster of other profiles, but an individual whose lust for power led him to support democratic causes. O'Brien mounts an eloquent defense of Dana Andrews, never a critic's favorite, and shows why Bing Crosby's currently unrecognized genius deserves more than denigration from listmakers who place Nine Inch Nails ahead of him. Most fascinating is the homage to Vertigo, in which O'Brien convincingly turns the picture's off-centered structure and plot implausibilities into strengths. He doesn't pressure readers into adopting his point of view, but simply and tactfully makes his case through imagery, seducing readers into surrendering their prejudices and joining him on an enchanting ride. (June)
Forecast:In an era of blatant blurbs and empty superlatives, this thoughtful book is particularly worth savoring. It will attract literate film buffs but, regrettably, may be too highbrow for bestsellerdom.
