Customer Reviews

Columbia Pictures: Portrait of a Studio

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have entitled this review the history and style of Columbia Pictures for one central reason. The text of Columbia Pictures: Portrait of a Studio is divided fairly evenly between
the two approaches, between a short introduction detailing the history of Columbia to about the early 1990's, followed by stylistic essays penned by associate authors. The later
delve into the stylistic approaches and stylistic specialties that marked the earlier decades of Columbia's production. Columbia was really the largest of the minor Hollywood
studios, focusing in its early years on mostly B movie production. That is until Frank Capra's Academy Award win in 1935 for "It Happened One Night" which put Columbia on the
track to compete with the majors as, perhaps, the smallest "major" studio. The material that author/editor Bernard Dick apparently researched and included is very much like the
historical sketch that introduces the studio book, "The Columbia Story". The studio book is far better illustrated, of course, than the more modest book edited by Bernard Dick.
Dick's book is very much like the type of monograph that college professors write in fulfillment of their contractual research and teaching responsibilities as university
faculty members. Dick's "Portrait of a Studio" is very much in the vein of that type of monograph. The history part of the book runs only 64 pages with notes and a chronology.
To fill-out the remainder of the book's 230 pages,the author/editor includes essays of associates or colleagues who, in the main, are other professors of English at the college
level. So I would characterize this book as more an academic monograph than a trade publication. Some of the essays, included, are excellent specialty explorations of topics as
diverse as Film Noir at Columbia and the Rita Hayworth phenomenon at Columbia. These shed new light on those aspects of Columbia's history as a studio. There is a fine
exploration of Frank Capra's contribution of his classic films to the studio and how their themes elevated Columbia's product. There is a good short interview with the Columbia
screenwriter Daniel Taradash, and other informative criticism of the "art of Columbia". There is a lot of good information in Bernard Dick's assembly of research and criticism,
including a fine appendix listing the Columbia features, by year, from 1920 through 1991. So about twenty years worth of the recent Columbia pipeline releases, under its new
and present departmentalization at Sony Pictures, are not covered by the book. The book is an interesting read combining both history and criticism.