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Farber on Film: The Complete Film Writings of Manny Farber
Manny Farber (1917–2008) was a unique figure among American movie critics. Champion of what he called "termite art" (focused, often eccentric virtuosity as opposed to "white elephant" monumentality), master of a one-of-a-kind prose style whose jazz-like phrasing and incandescent twists and turns made every review an adventure, he has long been revered by his peers. Susan Sontag called him "the liveliest, smartest, most original film critic this country ever produced"; for Peter Bogdanovich, he was "razor-sharp in his perceptions" and "never less than brilliant as a writer."
Farber was an early discoverer of many filmmakers later acclaimed as American masters: Val Lewton, Preston Sturges, Samuel Fuller, Raoul Walsh, Anthony Mann. A prodigiously gifted painter himself, he brought to his writing an artist's eye for what was on the screen. Alert to any filmmaker, no matter how marginal or unsung, who was "doing go-for-broke art and not caring what comes of it," he was uncompromising in his contempt for pretension and trendiness-for, as he put it, directors who "pin the viewer to the wall and slug him with wet towels of artiness and significance."
The excitement of his criticism, however, has less to do with his particular likes and dislikes than with the quality of attention he paid to each film as it unfolds, to the "chains of rapport and intimate knowledge" in its moment-to-moment reality. To transcribe that knowledge he created a prose that, in Robert Polito's words, allows for "oddities, muddles, crises, contradictions, dead ends, multiple alternatives, and divergent vistas." The result is critical essays that are themselves works of art.
Farber on Film contains this extraordinary body of work in its entirety for the first time, from his early and previously uncollected weekly reviews for The New Republic and The Nation to his brilliant later essays (some written in collaboration with his wife, Patricia Patterson) on Godard, Fassbinder, Herzog, Scorsese, Altman, and others. Featuring an introduction by editor Robert Polito that examines in detail the stages of Farber's career and his enduring significance as writer and thinker, Farber on Film is a landmark volume that will be a classic in American criticism.
Farber was an early discoverer of many filmmakers later acclaimed as American masters: Val Lewton, Preston Sturges, Samuel Fuller, Raoul Walsh, Anthony Mann. A prodigiously gifted painter himself, he brought to his writing an artist's eye for what was on the screen. Alert to any filmmaker, no matter how marginal or unsung, who was "doing go-for-broke art and not caring what comes of it," he was uncompromising in his contempt for pretension and trendiness-for, as he put it, directors who "pin the viewer to the wall and slug him with wet towels of artiness and significance."
The excitement of his criticism, however, has less to do with his particular likes and dislikes than with the quality of attention he paid to each film as it unfolds, to the "chains of rapport and intimate knowledge" in its moment-to-moment reality. To transcribe that knowledge he created a prose that, in Robert Polito's words, allows for "oddities, muddles, crises, contradictions, dead ends, multiple alternatives, and divergent vistas." The result is critical essays that are themselves works of art.
Farber on Film contains this extraordinary body of work in its entirety for the first time, from his early and previously uncollected weekly reviews for The New Republic and The Nation to his brilliant later essays (some written in collaboration with his wife, Patricia Patterson) on Godard, Fassbinder, Herzog, Scorsese, Altman, and others. Featuring an introduction by editor Robert Polito that examines in detail the stages of Farber's career and his enduring significance as writer and thinker, Farber on Film is a landmark volume that will be a classic in American criticism.
1000 pages, Hardcover
First published August 25, 2009
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
August 5, 2019
This comprehensive, 800 page collection of the film criticism of Manny Farber should be required reading--or at least required skimming--for everyone who cares about film and its styles, its significance, and the special techniques that endow individual movies with their uniqueness and particularity.
Farber is most famous for a few of the terms in his eccentric lexicon of film--elephant art, termite art, negative space, the gimp--but I find that he is most instructive when he shares his painter's eye view of a particular movie, revealing the moments in it that shine with idiosyncratic liveliness and power.. The Jesuit Gerald Manley Hopkins would have called this "inscape"--the dynamic, individual "thingness" of a thing, the design that gives it particular identity--and for Farber, it is this quality that makes movie-going worthwhile. If you read only a few of Farber's pieces, you might be tempted to identify this "inscape" quality with a documentary-like realistic atmosphere, an ironic performance in the midst of sentimentality, or an eccentricity of style, but as you explore what he has to say, you realize that what he loves is something deeper and richer, albeit hard to define.
What Farber hates is easier to talk about: he hates bullshit: inflated acting, the unthinking application of a glossy Hollywood style, portentously "arty" shadows and camera angles, bogus Freudian symbolism as substitute for character revelation, minimalist TV techniques designed to telegraph an easy message, etc. He may ridicule an acknowledged classic for its phoniness, and then immediately turn around and praise an obscure little picture for the natural way its people eat at the dinner table. But whatever he trashes or champions, he does so in the service of what makes movies unique and admirable.
Some illuminating and infuriating excerpts, chosen almost at random from the first 150 pages:
On Disney's "Bambi":
"The worst effect of all this artiness is the preference now for cheap painting . . . in place of the movement which was the main thing before. No longer do the trees and flowers carry on like mad: they are there for pretty, and as the camera moves slowly over them and you drink up all this tinseled loveliness, there is the lone deer on the distant hilltop, a gold aura around him. Mickey wouldn't be caught dead in this.
On Welles' "The Magnificent Ambersons":
In keeping with this eclecticism are photographic tricks from everywhere, so unintegrated you can't miss them. These aren't as objectionable as the general theatrical use of the camera, which subscribes to the theory that six shadows are six times as dramatic as one and the blacker the better. This eighty-eight-minute dim-out negates nearly everything a camera can do.
On Hitchcock's "The Shadow of a Doubt":
Hitchcock shows here that sensationalism is not necessary to every part of a movie if the details of ordinary activity are examined for their fullest suggestiveness. His most expressive moments are the sudden switches in emotion in midstride of an activity: the abrupt change in the pace of a walk or the tone of a voice, the sudden hurrying of people into position. As a result he is producing movies of high quality. As for his famous horror and suspense, they are here . . .
On Preston Sturges' "The Miracle at Morgan's Creek":
Sturges has realized his trademark in this movie better than in any of his other films--that is, to keep a picture exploding from scene to scene with a great frenzy, excitement and energy, by gagging anything either for a laugh or to keep the pace and nature of the movie close to a rout. . . Sturges' films come very close to the energetic sadism of primitive comic strips like "The Katzenjammer Kids," and they are a fine pleasure.
August 30, 2018
My impression of every review Farber ever wrote:
"The Emperor of Wyoming" (Universal-International), Anthony Mann's latest swing 'n miss at self-mythologizing sleight-of-hand, squanders it's scant narrative integrity, though a chiaroscuro close-up of a buffalo's nostril instantly brings to mind the best footnotes of Frederick Jackson Turner. Ernest Haller's photography is a chilly downpour of compromised hues as John Wayne ambles in full Earp-via-Jung "See here, young lady" loquaciousness. Thespians high and low offer self-conscious leaks and gambler's tells straight from the days of Mabel Normand, save for veteran character actor Jay C. Flippen, who consistently spits his chaw like a Burmese harpsichord. A monumental waste of time (even the popcorn at the Rialto tasted rheumy) and solid contender for Best Picture of 1955.
"The Emperor of Wyoming" (Universal-International), Anthony Mann's latest swing 'n miss at self-mythologizing sleight-of-hand, squanders it's scant narrative integrity, though a chiaroscuro close-up of a buffalo's nostril instantly brings to mind the best footnotes of Frederick Jackson Turner. Ernest Haller's photography is a chilly downpour of compromised hues as John Wayne ambles in full Earp-via-Jung "See here, young lady" loquaciousness. Thespians high and low offer self-conscious leaks and gambler's tells straight from the days of Mabel Normand, save for veteran character actor Jay C. Flippen, who consistently spits his chaw like a Burmese harpsichord. A monumental waste of time (even the popcorn at the Rialto tasted rheumy) and solid contender for Best Picture of 1955.
June 11, 2025
Manny Farber was not, as the book advertises, America's greatest film critic, though he was certainly it's most original. Farber doesn't seem to approach film as though it's something that he enjoys, but as something he must, as an outsider, evaluate. Oftentimes he finds it lacking. Farber, a painter by training, believed that film and painting were essentially one and the same. While this is absolutely incorrect, it gives him a unique perspective that allows him to judge the visual quality of a film, especially as it relates to space and mise-en-scene.
The book is divided into three sections: Farber's reviews for The New Republic, Farber's reviews for The Nation, and Farber's longer essays and occasional reviews that he cowrote with his wife, Patricia Patterson, usually for Artforum, City Magazine, and Film Comment, amongst others. As the first two had, by Farber's own admission, different house styles that affected his writing, there is the impression of a writer who is constantly experimenting with self-expression. In the first two sections, Farber's fearlessly contrarian opinions are sometimes agreeable, sometimes shocking, but always interesting. He has a great deal of insight into the way that films affect each other and the larger trends across the medium, such as the earnestness and forcefulness of the socially progressive art movies of the 1950's. He also has a tendency to reject some of the lighter qualities that endear a film to its audience, such as the vitality and distinctiveness of Sweet Smell of Success, because he considers the carefully constructed tone of the film to be artificial and overwrought. This determined, independent perspective is carefully honed in the first two parts of the book, and Farber establishes himself as perhaps the most interesting and distinctive film critic of his time.
In the third part, however, Farber begins to falter. He writes two essays, both called Nearer My Agee to Thee , in which he describes James Agee and critics in his vein. The second piece contains his gripes with a number of his contemporary critics, especially Andrew Sarris and Susan Sontag (who, ironically, called him, "the liveliest, smartest, most original film critic this country has ever produced"). He describes their reviews as being, one could say, too smart, too full of witty phrases and trite expressions, too self-satisfied and superior. However, Farber, while collaborating with his wife and having abandoned the house styles of the earlier parts, begins to imitate these very shortcomings. Whenever he makes a statement about modern film and film trends, he manages to keep saying something interesting. But when he actually writes (or co-writes) a film review proper, he writes in a manner that seems to imitate his complaints about his colleagues. He mostly seems to imitate, god forbid, Bosley Crowther, the stuck-up critic for the New York Times. At times, he has a tendency to interpret a film in a manner that is plainly wrong, such as Nashville and Taxi Driver. I think the best example of Farber's human foibles is his use of the word "gunsel." He uses this word for decades to describe gangsters and hitmen who wield some sort of firearm, having heard the term and assumed he knew the definition. However, the term gunsel actually describes an effeminate homosexual man, like a twink. Farber doesn't know this because he wasn't "in" on the city slang of the 1920's, and so makes a longtime habit of using this word wrongly to spice up his prose.
When Farber has not sunk to this low, however, he is still an original and necessary, if often disagreeable, voice for the introduction of art and more interesting and original elements into the medium of film. The visibly strong work ethic of his prose and the well-wrought quality of his opinions make this book essential reading for any film fan who can bear to see their favorite films get trashed.
The book is divided into three sections: Farber's reviews for The New Republic, Farber's reviews for The Nation, and Farber's longer essays and occasional reviews that he cowrote with his wife, Patricia Patterson, usually for Artforum, City Magazine, and Film Comment, amongst others. As the first two had, by Farber's own admission, different house styles that affected his writing, there is the impression of a writer who is constantly experimenting with self-expression. In the first two sections, Farber's fearlessly contrarian opinions are sometimes agreeable, sometimes shocking, but always interesting. He has a great deal of insight into the way that films affect each other and the larger trends across the medium, such as the earnestness and forcefulness of the socially progressive art movies of the 1950's. He also has a tendency to reject some of the lighter qualities that endear a film to its audience, such as the vitality and distinctiveness of Sweet Smell of Success, because he considers the carefully constructed tone of the film to be artificial and overwrought. This determined, independent perspective is carefully honed in the first two parts of the book, and Farber establishes himself as perhaps the most interesting and distinctive film critic of his time.
In the third part, however, Farber begins to falter. He writes two essays, both called Nearer My Agee to Thee , in which he describes James Agee and critics in his vein. The second piece contains his gripes with a number of his contemporary critics, especially Andrew Sarris and Susan Sontag (who, ironically, called him, "the liveliest, smartest, most original film critic this country has ever produced"). He describes their reviews as being, one could say, too smart, too full of witty phrases and trite expressions, too self-satisfied and superior. However, Farber, while collaborating with his wife and having abandoned the house styles of the earlier parts, begins to imitate these very shortcomings. Whenever he makes a statement about modern film and film trends, he manages to keep saying something interesting. But when he actually writes (or co-writes) a film review proper, he writes in a manner that seems to imitate his complaints about his colleagues. He mostly seems to imitate, god forbid, Bosley Crowther, the stuck-up critic for the New York Times. At times, he has a tendency to interpret a film in a manner that is plainly wrong, such as Nashville and Taxi Driver. I think the best example of Farber's human foibles is his use of the word "gunsel." He uses this word for decades to describe gangsters and hitmen who wield some sort of firearm, having heard the term and assumed he knew the definition. However, the term gunsel actually describes an effeminate homosexual man, like a twink. Farber doesn't know this because he wasn't "in" on the city slang of the 1920's, and so makes a longtime habit of using this word wrongly to spice up his prose.
When Farber has not sunk to this low, however, he is still an original and necessary, if often disagreeable, voice for the introduction of art and more interesting and original elements into the medium of film. The visibly strong work ethic of his prose and the well-wrought quality of his opinions make this book essential reading for any film fan who can bear to see their favorite films get trashed.
June 23, 2020
One of the most honest critics ever maybe the most honest, to be honest, Manny will spend 4 pages talking about a film and by the end you still don't know if he liked it or not. I love Pauline she's A2 to his A1 but Manny saw through the screen totally in his own way. Kael connected the review to a different more pop-culture more everyday part of her (and your) social/personal life, but Manny is speaking his own language and once you learn it the entire art form looks different. Love love love his early to mid 1940s reviews, the Preston Sturges essay especially.
November 24, 2012
It was a peculiar honor and pleasure to have taken classes by the late and revered film critic Manny Farber while an undergraduate at the University of California San Diego, where he taught. It was he, first among a host of serious film pundits, who convinced me that a critic was someone who's copy a smart editor left untouched. So long as the critic could write well, knew his or her stuff regarding the art and history of cinema, and who could meet deadlines without hassle, the editor was wise not to try to change or modify a critic's opinion,let alone tamper with the prose style. A readership distrusted reviewers who seemed to write great praises for every film a studio released, and were drawn more toward that critic they were sure they'd an honest and well argued opinion from. One also would look for that critic who'd managed to alert you to things in movie making that you hadn't been aware of, or only had a vague notion about. The blessing for lovers of movies and readers of quality film criticism was the 2009 publication of
Farber on Film: The Complete Film Writings of Manny Farber from Library of America. Farber, a painter of note as well as a film critic, brought to the task of reviewing the artist's eye; he could take in the entire canvas and was able to discuss the visual styles of directors, photographers and lighting technicians who could create a distinct set of techniques to get across a broad and subtle range of emotions. The wonders of the collection is that one finds that while Farber broke with the pack and wrote about movies as a fully developed art in itself and not an adjunct or subsidiary form to another--film is no medium's poor cousin--he wasn't a strident formalist. The social uses of film concerned him as well, and through out this anthology one finds the juiciest of tidbits that clarify what's confused, puncture what's pretentious, highlight what his not discussed:
"The robust irrationality of the mouse comedies has been squelched by the syrup that has been gradually flowing over the Disney way.”
"Good work usually arises when the creators... seem to have no ambitions towards gilt culture but are involved in a kind of squandering-beaverish endeavor that isn't anywhere or anything... It goes always forward eating its own boundaries, and, likely as not, leaves nothing in its path other than the signs of eager, industrious, unkempt activity."
"Masterpiece art, reminiscent of the enameled tobacco humidors and wooden lawn ponies bought at white elephant auctions decades ago, has come to dominate the overpopulated arts of TV and movies. Three sins of white elephant art are (1) frame the action with an all-over pattern, (2) install every event, character, situation in a frieze of continuities, and (3) treat every inch of the screen and film as a potential area for prize worthy creativity. "
Movies were the issue at hand, and discussing them Farber was able to slice through the distinctions that kept low , middle and high culture segregated and their respective audiences apart. Movies were a vehicle anyone who'd seen them could have an opinion of--all of us had seen the same film, all of us had seen and understood, the same plot and motivations, and all of us, with no specialized training nor advanced degrees, could bring our interpretations to the discussion; anyone who cared to participate could have a say. As often as not, the long range conversations and disagreements over movies and their meanings, directors and their directions, was itself criticism, much of it sparked by the concise, pity, perceptually brilliant musings of Manny Farber.
I realize, though, that this great period of American film criticism is largely behind us, giving way to a consumer guide ratings that are pithy, if not artful. A large part of the problem might well be that critics, so called, are bored with a preponderance of movies that bleed into one another--how other movies does this stinker remind me of?-- but there are those who fight the good fight none the less. I am thinking of Duncan Shepard of the San Diego Reader, a Farber protege, who seems not to care for the majority of releases he's tasked with evaluating and yet who is among the top movie essayists in the country: his writings on the Coen Brothers and Clint Eastwood are the finest and subtlest I've come across. Still,the trend is not good.
There was a funny 2005 piece by former Slate film critic David Edelstein about those film reviewers who seemingly are willing to whore their good names in order to be quoted in big movie ads. Edelstein gets to heart of the matter that film criticism has become a game of dodge ball rather than a reasonable case for why a movie is good, bad, or stalls somewhere in between. Critics will flee or produce more colored smoke if someone presses them to back up the original opinion; Peter Travers, Rolling Stone's shrill shill for mediocre work, would evaporate like slight rain in Death Valley if he were grilled. Film criticism used to mean, not all that long ago, an exercise in establishing movies as a rich and unique narrative art form, with a critical vocabulary and working theories used to establish criteria for good, bad and indifferent work.
Impressionable as a twentyish critic , I applied the thinking to what reviews I did for some local publications and, truth be told, I was a bag of wind much of the time, grandiose and prolix, but the readers got an honest and considered opinion. Yes, I know that I was read; I still have both my hate and fan mail. All this worked as long as their was a constant stream of good films to parse, but as film production became the province of corporate interests, and as more independent publications became property of overgrown media combines, criticism became cheer leading for company projects, good , bad or worse.
Time magazine, for example, is in charge of reviewing the product of Warner Brothers Studios. However loud the chant goes that there is no undue influence put upon Time's assigned scribe, it remains a rotten situation. You wonder just how badly Richard Schickel could maul a particularly odious WB release without the worry of getting pink slipped. The consequence of this is that nearly every mainstream reviewer reads like Peter Travers, manically upbeat, cheery, positive, and utterly, completely unreliable. Critics, as such, are little more than musicians who can play only one song. Their answer to that charge would be, naturally, a variation of witlessly up sided spin: "Well yes, and what's more, we can play "Happy Birthday" in every key!” It would be a nice party trick, but it doesn't cut for discussion when you most desire one.
Farber on Film: The Complete Film Writings of Manny Farber from Library of America. Farber, a painter of note as well as a film critic, brought to the task of reviewing the artist's eye; he could take in the entire canvas and was able to discuss the visual styles of directors, photographers and lighting technicians who could create a distinct set of techniques to get across a broad and subtle range of emotions. The wonders of the collection is that one finds that while Farber broke with the pack and wrote about movies as a fully developed art in itself and not an adjunct or subsidiary form to another--film is no medium's poor cousin--he wasn't a strident formalist. The social uses of film concerned him as well, and through out this anthology one finds the juiciest of tidbits that clarify what's confused, puncture what's pretentious, highlight what his not discussed:
"The robust irrationality of the mouse comedies has been squelched by the syrup that has been gradually flowing over the Disney way.”
"Good work usually arises when the creators... seem to have no ambitions towards gilt culture but are involved in a kind of squandering-beaverish endeavor that isn't anywhere or anything... It goes always forward eating its own boundaries, and, likely as not, leaves nothing in its path other than the signs of eager, industrious, unkempt activity."
"Masterpiece art, reminiscent of the enameled tobacco humidors and wooden lawn ponies bought at white elephant auctions decades ago, has come to dominate the overpopulated arts of TV and movies. Three sins of white elephant art are (1) frame the action with an all-over pattern, (2) install every event, character, situation in a frieze of continuities, and (3) treat every inch of the screen and film as a potential area for prize worthy creativity. "
Movies were the issue at hand, and discussing them Farber was able to slice through the distinctions that kept low , middle and high culture segregated and their respective audiences apart. Movies were a vehicle anyone who'd seen them could have an opinion of--all of us had seen the same film, all of us had seen and understood, the same plot and motivations, and all of us, with no specialized training nor advanced degrees, could bring our interpretations to the discussion; anyone who cared to participate could have a say. As often as not, the long range conversations and disagreements over movies and their meanings, directors and their directions, was itself criticism, much of it sparked by the concise, pity, perceptually brilliant musings of Manny Farber.
I realize, though, that this great period of American film criticism is largely behind us, giving way to a consumer guide ratings that are pithy, if not artful. A large part of the problem might well be that critics, so called, are bored with a preponderance of movies that bleed into one another--how other movies does this stinker remind me of?-- but there are those who fight the good fight none the less. I am thinking of Duncan Shepard of the San Diego Reader, a Farber protege, who seems not to care for the majority of releases he's tasked with evaluating and yet who is among the top movie essayists in the country: his writings on the Coen Brothers and Clint Eastwood are the finest and subtlest I've come across. Still,the trend is not good.
There was a funny 2005 piece by former Slate film critic David Edelstein about those film reviewers who seemingly are willing to whore their good names in order to be quoted in big movie ads. Edelstein gets to heart of the matter that film criticism has become a game of dodge ball rather than a reasonable case for why a movie is good, bad, or stalls somewhere in between. Critics will flee or produce more colored smoke if someone presses them to back up the original opinion; Peter Travers, Rolling Stone's shrill shill for mediocre work, would evaporate like slight rain in Death Valley if he were grilled. Film criticism used to mean, not all that long ago, an exercise in establishing movies as a rich and unique narrative art form, with a critical vocabulary and working theories used to establish criteria for good, bad and indifferent work.
Impressionable as a twentyish critic , I applied the thinking to what reviews I did for some local publications and, truth be told, I was a bag of wind much of the time, grandiose and prolix, but the readers got an honest and considered opinion. Yes, I know that I was read; I still have both my hate and fan mail. All this worked as long as their was a constant stream of good films to parse, but as film production became the province of corporate interests, and as more independent publications became property of overgrown media combines, criticism became cheer leading for company projects, good , bad or worse.
Time magazine, for example, is in charge of reviewing the product of Warner Brothers Studios. However loud the chant goes that there is no undue influence put upon Time's assigned scribe, it remains a rotten situation. You wonder just how badly Richard Schickel could maul a particularly odious WB release without the worry of getting pink slipped. The consequence of this is that nearly every mainstream reviewer reads like Peter Travers, manically upbeat, cheery, positive, and utterly, completely unreliable. Critics, as such, are little more than musicians who can play only one song. Their answer to that charge would be, naturally, a variation of witlessly up sided spin: "Well yes, and what's more, we can play "Happy Birthday" in every key!” It would be a nice party trick, but it doesn't cut for discussion when you most desire one.
July 16, 2025
Both massive and invaluable, the 800-page collected criticism of Manny Farber is nevertheless hardly a white elephant despite the color dominating its cover design. Covering the years 1942 to 1977 when Farber was a working critic for a variety of publications, reading the shorter reviews and longer articles in order gives readers a sense not only of a heavily invested, discerning viewer articulating the film culture of that period, but also how these individual works are related and, most crucially, what they explicitly show onscreen. A painter, craftsman, and even professional housing contractor in addition to a supreme prose stylist, possibly no critic both before or after was as uniquely attuned to the very frame of the film itself and how a movie specifically works.
October 9, 2019
I have to confess that I did not read all of this and probably won't, but I will read a great deal of it and enjoy Farber's perspective and style. His take-down of the American film hero for instance is brilliant and Martian and funny as hell - though also, at the very same time, dismaying in its accurate portrayal of what Americans buy as heroic. Thanks to Manny, I will be re-watching Fassbinder, more Herzog, and taking a look at some American 'B' movies and directors that I've missed.
July 25, 2015
This is what criticism should be. Even if you disagree with Farber (which is hard to do), his passion and love of an art form is utterly inspiring.
June 4, 2021
At 824 pages, this book is too heavy to hold while reading. It encompasses the film writings of Manny Farber from 1942 to 1977, the later writings (from the late 1960s,) and many uncredited, with Patricia Patterson. It would take a lifetime to watch all of the films that Farber saw. One wonders how he chose what to see. There is no mention of Chris Marker, and no doubt there are many other films and filmmakers who were omitted.
It is clear that Farber was not enamored with Hollywood and the films which were made there. He was also critical of foreign filmmakers, even describing Yojimbo by Kurosawa as "dissolved into an inchoate mass of Goyalike extras whose swarmings and mouthings are composed with naïve pictorialism."
His writing is pragmatic and opinionated. His viewpoint of a keen observer of human behavior. He was in search of honesty and in the movies, it is not easy to find.
It is clear that Farber was not enamored with Hollywood and the films which were made there. He was also critical of foreign filmmakers, even describing Yojimbo by Kurosawa as "dissolved into an inchoate mass of Goyalike extras whose swarmings and mouthings are composed with naïve pictorialism."
His writing is pragmatic and opinionated. His viewpoint of a keen observer of human behavior. He was in search of honesty and in the movies, it is not easy to find.
December 26, 2009
Bound Miami SunPost December 10, 2009
http://miamisunpost.com/themorgue/200...
Critic with a Fist
Manny Farber Kicked Film Ass
John Hood
How the fuck did I not know about the film criticism of Manny Farber? Granted the bulk of his beautifully brutal work occurred before I made my way into the cold cruel world. But a lot of things went down before there was a Hoodlum mouthing around, and I’m in on their particulars. Like film noir, for instance, the genre that some claim I actually seem to be re-living out, in living color. Or pulp fiction, the form that appears to fit me like one of Brando’s well-torn tees. Then there’s the raked lid, the zooted suit, the guys and the dolls and the gun molls, each of which gets me giddy with go-cat-go. All of those great good things existed prior to my time on this wicked earth, and I’m obsessively intimate with every single solitary one of ‘em.
So then why in the world was I not hip to a cat that covered the flickers like some pulp fiction pugilist who stepped straight outta gangland? No reason. There’s no excuse either. I missed out on a heavyweight champion of word and wisdom. And I’ll be kicking myself in the ass until I can’t lift my two-tone shoes off the blood-spilled pavement.
Or at least until I completely read and then re-read Robert Polito’s comprehensively edited Farber on Film (The Library of America $40). And since the 800+ page book reportedly contains everything the master ever crafted about the pictures, and since everything he ever crafted about the pictures begins at brilliant, ends at astounding, and merits memorization, I’ll be at this task for quite some time.
And you know what? I’ll enjoy every mad minute of it, even if it takes to the last of my hard living days. Why? Because every time I crack the spine of this ass-kicking collection, I learn something, that’s why. And not just something about film either. (Though there is that.) No, when I crack the spine of Farber, I learn something about sight and sound and thought and action and how to angle it all into word. Mostly though, reading Farber I learn something about my own bad self. And that, my good friend, is no easy feat.
Take “Underground Films,” the piece which hits on the heels of “Hard Sell Cinema” and kicks off the years 1957-77. Basically a diatribe about how bad boy “soldier-cowboy-gangster directors” like Raoul Walsh, Howard Hawks, William Wellman, William Keighley and Anthony Mann had “turned out a huge amount of unprized, second-gear celluloid,” Farber is as mad at the men who made the movies as he is at the audience who watches them. In this case it’s the “tide” that was “in the process of burying a group that kept an endless flow of interesting roughneck film passing through the theaters.” To Farber, “Americans seem to have a special aptitude for allowing History to bury the toughest, most authentic native talents.” And he’s not about to let ‘em get away with it without at least a fat black eye.
Of the action directors, Farber dug Hawks the most, “because he shows a maximum speed, inner life, and view, with the least amount of flat foot.” “His best films” (from Scarface to The Big Sleep) “have the swallowed-up intricacy of a good soft-shoe dance.” Walsh’s films (They Drive By Night, White Heat) “are melancholy masterpieces.” Wellman is “at his best in stiff, vulgar, low-pulp material.” And “Mann’s inhumanity to man can be studied best in The Tall Target, Border Incident, etc.” This is a mind that’s mulled over mayhem, and he it rest until the best of it gets recognized.
But Farber’s no mere cheerleader. Far from it. In fact he bitchslaps more than he applauds. I couldn’t even begin to list the names of films and directors and actors and writers who get dressed down and shown they’ve no clothes, but I will tell you that in addition to the above-mentioned, there are damn few who don’t.
Still, Farber’s is not a gratuitous ass-kicking. He’s not some cranky curmudgeon lamenting the loss of his or his movie’s youth. No, his is a studied attack, keen, knowing and carefully calculated to ring in the ears of both victim and reader until the cows jump over the moon. I’ve neither the time nor the space to truly do this work justice. I doubt seriously if I’ve got the talent either. But what I do have is an assurance that if you read even one of these essays, you will be awakened. Yes, more often than not it’ll be akin to being awakened with a fist to the face. But it’s awakened nonetheless. And anyway, the more black-and-blue the bruising, the least likely you are to ever forget it.
Read Farber. You’ll never see another movie the same way again.
http://miamisunpost.com/themorgue/200...
Critic with a Fist
Manny Farber Kicked Film Ass
John Hood
How the fuck did I not know about the film criticism of Manny Farber? Granted the bulk of his beautifully brutal work occurred before I made my way into the cold cruel world. But a lot of things went down before there was a Hoodlum mouthing around, and I’m in on their particulars. Like film noir, for instance, the genre that some claim I actually seem to be re-living out, in living color. Or pulp fiction, the form that appears to fit me like one of Brando’s well-torn tees. Then there’s the raked lid, the zooted suit, the guys and the dolls and the gun molls, each of which gets me giddy with go-cat-go. All of those great good things existed prior to my time on this wicked earth, and I’m obsessively intimate with every single solitary one of ‘em.
So then why in the world was I not hip to a cat that covered the flickers like some pulp fiction pugilist who stepped straight outta gangland? No reason. There’s no excuse either. I missed out on a heavyweight champion of word and wisdom. And I’ll be kicking myself in the ass until I can’t lift my two-tone shoes off the blood-spilled pavement.
Or at least until I completely read and then re-read Robert Polito’s comprehensively edited Farber on Film (The Library of America $40). And since the 800+ page book reportedly contains everything the master ever crafted about the pictures, and since everything he ever crafted about the pictures begins at brilliant, ends at astounding, and merits memorization, I’ll be at this task for quite some time.
And you know what? I’ll enjoy every mad minute of it, even if it takes to the last of my hard living days. Why? Because every time I crack the spine of this ass-kicking collection, I learn something, that’s why. And not just something about film either. (Though there is that.) No, when I crack the spine of Farber, I learn something about sight and sound and thought and action and how to angle it all into word. Mostly though, reading Farber I learn something about my own bad self. And that, my good friend, is no easy feat.
Take “Underground Films,” the piece which hits on the heels of “Hard Sell Cinema” and kicks off the years 1957-77. Basically a diatribe about how bad boy “soldier-cowboy-gangster directors” like Raoul Walsh, Howard Hawks, William Wellman, William Keighley and Anthony Mann had “turned out a huge amount of unprized, second-gear celluloid,” Farber is as mad at the men who made the movies as he is at the audience who watches them. In this case it’s the “tide” that was “in the process of burying a group that kept an endless flow of interesting roughneck film passing through the theaters.” To Farber, “Americans seem to have a special aptitude for allowing History to bury the toughest, most authentic native talents.” And he’s not about to let ‘em get away with it without at least a fat black eye.
Of the action directors, Farber dug Hawks the most, “because he shows a maximum speed, inner life, and view, with the least amount of flat foot.” “His best films” (from Scarface to The Big Sleep) “have the swallowed-up intricacy of a good soft-shoe dance.” Walsh’s films (They Drive By Night, White Heat) “are melancholy masterpieces.” Wellman is “at his best in stiff, vulgar, low-pulp material.” And “Mann’s inhumanity to man can be studied best in The Tall Target, Border Incident, etc.” This is a mind that’s mulled over mayhem, and he it rest until the best of it gets recognized.
But Farber’s no mere cheerleader. Far from it. In fact he bitchslaps more than he applauds. I couldn’t even begin to list the names of films and directors and actors and writers who get dressed down and shown they’ve no clothes, but I will tell you that in addition to the above-mentioned, there are damn few who don’t.
Still, Farber’s is not a gratuitous ass-kicking. He’s not some cranky curmudgeon lamenting the loss of his or his movie’s youth. No, his is a studied attack, keen, knowing and carefully calculated to ring in the ears of both victim and reader until the cows jump over the moon. I’ve neither the time nor the space to truly do this work justice. I doubt seriously if I’ve got the talent either. But what I do have is an assurance that if you read even one of these essays, you will be awakened. Yes, more often than not it’ll be akin to being awakened with a fist to the face. But it’s awakened nonetheless. And anyway, the more black-and-blue the bruising, the least likely you are to ever forget it.
Read Farber. You’ll never see another movie the same way again.
October 16, 2013
Like Andrew Sarris, Farber appreciates neglected genre films more so than prestige pictures. For me, Farber isn't as accessible as Sarris because he cites many more obscure and even forgotten films. Still, much of his insight is brilliant and I agree with the big picture of his arguments.
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December 10, 2012omg, omg, OMG! FINALLY.
January 15, 2017
Many great apercus, but occasionally hard to parse out a meaning.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews