University of Chicago Press
The Rhapsodes: How 1940s Critics Changed American Film Culture
Key Metrics
- David Bordwell
- University of Chicago Press
- Hardcover
- 9780226352176
- 9.1 X 6 X 0.6 inches
- 0.8 pounds
- Performing Arts > Film - History & Criticism
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
With The Rhapsodes, renowned film scholar and critic David Bordwell--an heir to both those legacies--restores to a wider audience the work of Ferguson, Agee, Farber, and Tyler, critics he calls the Rhapsodes for the passionate and deliberately offbeat nature of their vernacular prose. Each broke with prevailing currents in criticism in order to find new ways to talk about the popular films that contemporaries often saw at best as trivial, at worst as a betrayal of art. Ferguson saw in Hollywood an engaging, adroit mode of popular storytelling. Agee sought in cinema the lyrical epiphanies found in romantic poetry. Farber, trained as a painter, brought a pictorial intelligence to bear on film. A surrealist, Tyler treated classic Hollywood as a collective hallucination that invited both audience and critic to find moments of subversive pleasure. With his customary clarity and brio, Bordwell takes readers through the relevant cultural and critical landscape and considers the critics' writing styles, their conceptions of films, and their quarrels. He concludes by examining the profound impact of Ferguson, Agee, Farber, and Tyler on later generations of film writers.
The Rhapsodes allows readers to rediscover these remarkable critics who broke with convention to capture what they found moving, artful, or disappointing in classic Hollywood cinema and explores their robust--and continuing--influence.
Author Bio
David Bordwell is Jacques Ledoux Professor of Film Studies, Department of Communication Arts, University of Wisconsin–Madison. Professor Bordwell has written several books focusing on the history of film style, film narration, and the poetics of cinema.
In 2013, film historian and theorist David Bordwell deposited approximately 125 film prints at the Academy Film Archive, all in 35mm. The David Bordwell Collection is particularly noteworthy for the strength of its Hong Kong holdings, some of which are unavailable in any other English-translated format. The collection includes such titles as “Crippled Avengers” (1979), “Once Upon a Time in China I-V” (1991-1994), “Iron Monkey” (1993), “Green Snake” (1994), and “Naked Killer” (1995), as well as non-Hong Kong titles such as “Desperately Seeking Susan” (1985), “Prospero’s Books” (1991), and “The Long Day Closes” (1992).
Research Interests
Introduction to Graduate Study in Film
Seminar in Film Analysis
Seminar in Contemporary Film Theory
Seminar in Contemporary Film Criticism
Narrative Theory and Film
Japanese Cinema
Japanese Cinema of the 1930s
Technology and Technique in American Cinema
Space and Narration in the Fiction Film
The Films of Jean-Luc Godard
Cognitive Poetics of Cinema
Stylistic Analysis of Film
The Film Spectator
Contemporary Asian Cinema
Comparative Film Analysis
Education
- B.A. (English) State University of New York at Albany, 1969
- M.A. (Speech and Dramatic Arts, concentration in Film) University of Iowa, 1972
- Ph.D. (Speech and Dramatic Arts, concentration in Film) University of Iowa, 1974.
- Honorary degree: Doctora philosophiæ honoris causa, University of Copenhagen. Awarded 13 November 1997.
Source: davidbordwell.net and Oscars.org
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