What do you think?
Rate this book
The Contemporary Cinema
In a sustained, imaginative survey of the whole post-war scene, Penelope Houston shows how the cinema has adjusted itself to meet a new audience which approaches films more critically than before, but in doing so encourages new talent. At the same time, she makes clear the industrial problems (in particular, the flight to co-exist with TV) which are inseparable from the business of making, distributing, and promoting a very expensive product to a highly unreliable market.
- GenresFilmNonfiction
222 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1963
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
Want to Read
October 31, 2015This is not a review, but an observation, and a reflection. For now.
I was in the bookstore today and saw this book, The Contemporary Cinema, 1945-1963, by Penelope Houston. Forget, if you will, that 1945-1963 isn't exactly contemporary cinema at this point in time, although I would argue it was a grander and more complex contemporary cinema than the watered-down comic-book-juvenilia-laden tripe now proffered.
What I realized was that after building an impressive collection of cinema books through the years I had no titles by Houston, who was a longtime editor of Sight and Sound -- that premiere film publication -- and a frequently quoted scholar-critic in many other film books. She came from that golden time of film criticism, the 1950s-1970s, when the likes of Pauline Kael, Andrew Sarris, John Simon, Penelope Gilliat, Susan Sontag, Dilys Powell, Stanley Kauffmann, Manny Farber, Molly Haskell, Dwight Macdonald, and so on, were elevating the intellectual level of film criticism, which has since fallen not so much with their deaths or retirements but with the death of intelligent films...and probably, too, like everything else, the birth of the internet, which gave us, uh, Harry Knowles.
So I bought the book. Settling down this evening to peruse the tome, I went to that same lovely internet to look up some biographical info on Houston. The first thing I saw was an obituary.
She died five days ago. I had no idea.
It is times like these, these freakish moments that unsettle, that I have to write...something.
I was in the bookstore today and saw this book, The Contemporary Cinema, 1945-1963, by Penelope Houston. Forget, if you will, that 1945-1963 isn't exactly contemporary cinema at this point in time, although I would argue it was a grander and more complex contemporary cinema than the watered-down comic-book-juvenilia-laden tripe now proffered.
What I realized was that after building an impressive collection of cinema books through the years I had no titles by Houston, who was a longtime editor of Sight and Sound -- that premiere film publication -- and a frequently quoted scholar-critic in many other film books. She came from that golden time of film criticism, the 1950s-1970s, when the likes of Pauline Kael, Andrew Sarris, John Simon, Penelope Gilliat, Susan Sontag, Dilys Powell, Stanley Kauffmann, Manny Farber, Molly Haskell, Dwight Macdonald, and so on, were elevating the intellectual level of film criticism, which has since fallen not so much with their deaths or retirements but with the death of intelligent films...and probably, too, like everything else, the birth of the internet, which gave us, uh, Harry Knowles.
So I bought the book. Settling down this evening to peruse the tome, I went to that same lovely internet to look up some biographical info on Houston. The first thing I saw was an obituary.
She died five days ago. I had no idea.
It is times like these, these freakish moments that unsettle, that I have to write...something.
February 6, 2025
Ugh. One would have loved to have spent time with Penelope Houston! What a critic! Thoughtful commentary, direct criticism, balanced perspectives but at times still cutting. A very smart overview of the time period, and hinting at visionary in its own way.
April 19, 2022
Seminal work covering 20 years post WWII film history. Clearly, if maybe uncounsciously, influenced by the Cahiers du Cinema, Penelope Houston´s overview of world cinema in the early 60s has dated very little and if most of it seems old news it´s exactly because the views expressed have massively penetraded present critical consensus. Sometimes prescient (pay-per-view, IMAX - Cinerama at the time), her writing is elegant but sober, never stooping to Anthony Lane-like hip-cute aphorisms.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews