American Movie Critics

"American Movie Critics - now published in an expanded edition - is an anthology of unparalleled scope that charts the rise of movies as art, industry, and mass entertainment. Beginning in the silent era - with poets Vachel Lindsay and Carl Sandburg hailing the new medium and Edmund Wilson paying tribute to Chaplin's Gold Rush - the collection traces the rapid evolution of the medium in an age of tumultuous political and social changes. Here are the great movie critics who forged a forceful vernacular idiom for talking about the new art: Otis Ferguson in the 1930s finding in James Cagney "the dignity of the genuine worn as easily as his skin"; James Agee in the 1940s on American war films and the advent of Italian neo-realism; Manny Farber, Pauline Kael, Andrew Sarris, Molly Haskell, Vincent Canby, and others from what Lopate calls "the golden age of movie criticism" from the 1950s through the '70s, a period when enthusiasms ran high, and arguments over style and content often took on a larger-than-life quality. Here too are the finest film reviewers on the contemporary scene, including Richard Schickel, Roger Ebert, and Manohla Dargis. An added section featuring Stephanie Zacharek, Nathan Lee, and David Bordwell highlights the influence of Internet-based criticism and the impact of new technology on film-viewing." "Joining the full-time film writers are many distinguished American authors weighing in on a range of cinematic experiences, including Ralph Ellison, Susan Sontag, James Baldwin, Brendan Gill, and John Ashbery. Together they define an often underappreciated genre of American writing, a tradition filled with the "energy, passion, and analytical juice" that for Lopate mark the best in movie criticism."--BOOK JACKET.Lopate, Phillip is the author of 'American Movie Critics', published 2008 under ISBN 9781598530223 and ISBN 1598530224.