Cinema Nation: The Best Writing on Film from The Nation. 1913-2000

by Carl Bromley (Editor), Peter Biskind (Foreword), Stuart Klawans (Introduction)

From the Marx Brothers to Mickey Mouse, from Charlie Chaplin to Austin Powers, The Nation magazine's coverage of cinema has reflected the critical, dissenting spirit that has animated the 135-year old radical weekly but also the wonder that this new mass medium unleashed. A 1913 editorial opined, "Robert Burn's famous prayer has been answered. The gift has been given us too see ourselves as others see us". The Nation has been a magnet for the best, most provocative and contrary writing about cinema. In 1915 the magazine protested Birth of Nation's release and yet in the 1940s James Agee, the magazine's chief film critic, sung its praises and disputed that it was racist. Other contributors lamented the dubious moral effect cinema had on the masses while Sergei Eisenstein, in a 1927 article, celebrated the physiological and psychological impact of his film Battleship Potemkin. The magazine was there during the first furious labor struggles in Hollywood and was one of the few voices protesting the McCarthyite witch hunt in Hollywood. Throughout its coverage it has been concerned with questions of censorship and free speech as well as the monopolistic power of Hollywood, and its influence on the wider political discourse. Contributors include: Sergei Eisenstein, James Agee, Manny Farber, Katha Politt, Dalton Trumbo, Richard Condon, Terry Southern, Robert Sklar, Susan Sontag, Diana DiPrima, Edward Said, Peter Biskind, Arthur Miller, Marcel Ophuls, Ring Lardner, Jules Feiffer, and Terrence Rafferty.

Genres: Film

252 pages, Paperback

First published October 17, 2000

Reviews

[Robert Dunbar · Rating 2 out of 5]

Essays with portentous titles like “The Church and the Movies,” “The Season in Moscow,” and “Hollywood Plays with Fascism” pretty much capture the spirit of this endeavor. Clearly, the editors of The Nation have always perceived cinema-as-entertainment to be beneath consideration, and the films themselves barely rate a mention in these tirades. No, the reviewers have more important things on their minds, and when comments about individual movies do manage to surface through the rhetoric, even those remarks prove bewildering. For instance, Manny Farber attacks John Huston’s entire body of work on the grounds that his characters appear to be obsessed with wealth (as though this somehow failed to mirror the world at large). Farber concludes: “The one persistent virtue of Huston’s newest and worst movie, We Were Strangers, is Jennifer Jones, who wears a constant frown as though she had just swallowed John Garfield.”

What could he mean exactly? Or even approximately? What would such a frown look like? In what way does it constitute a virtue, persistent or otherwise?

The reader in search of illumination had best look beyond this collection. Of interest solely because of their historical contexts, these leaden and obtuse tracts include articles by Dalton Trumbo, Susan Sontag, John Houseman and Nelson Algren. All are brilliant writers, of course, but few of them manage to disguise anti-capitalist bombast as actual film critiquing, and these strident, meandering essays consistently sneer at virtually all aspects of non-leftist culture. This attains absurd levels. John Leonard – in the improbable context of a review for The X-Files movie – claims that Carl Jung was “his own cave, inside of which it is impossible to distinguish the Swiss Cuckoo from the fascist tom-tom.” Hmm... it's difficult to dispute assertions like that (or to discern what is being asserted, let alone how it relates to Scully and Mulder). Over and again, such shrill incomprehensibility winds up reminiscent of case histories about twins who evolved a private language: gibberish to everyone else.

Even preaching to the choir requires a touch less solipsism. Clarity? Some appreciation for the medium under discussion? Now those are virtues.

[Mariam · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite books of all time, a literally awesome collection of articles written throughout the first century of cinema. Highlights include Sergei Eisenstein, Susan Sontag, James Agee, Manny Farber... Filmmakers writing about their contemporaries and forefathers, critics' ruminations on the societal aspect of cinema across the globe. While other books reflect on cinema of the past, these articles are priceless first hand accounts of gender roles, pre-code Hollywood & censorship, director as auteur, emerging technology, and art movements in the making.

[David Seals · Rating 5 out of 5]

Proud to have an essay herein, 'The New Custerism' about cowboy-and-indian movies