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Farber on Film: The Complete Film Writings of Manny Farber

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This is a long overdue collection of the complete film writings of one of the great film observers of all time. Manny Farber was much, much more than a film critic. He looked, really looked, at films in ways that no one else did during the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. He dissected films with a painter's eye, seeing what most everyone else missed. He looked at tough guy low budget movies. He looked at Hollywood big production films. He looked at foreign films and experimental films. He looked at cartoons.

And then he wrote. Farber wrote in a way that no one else did.

Farber started writing in the 1940s. His early reviews are still interesting as starting points before seeing the films he discusses. He had an uncanny knack for separating the fluff from substance and stopping great films and great directors long before others did (Hawks, Preston Sturges, Sam Fuller, Fassbinder, Herzog, and Michael Snow to name a few directors Farber championed). And he moved past mere plot summary and analysis to reviewing films in a whole new way.

This collection lets the reader watch Farber grow over time in his understanding of movies and in his writing. By the 1960s, he is writing essays(like his famous and influential "White Elephant Art vs. Termite Art). His later collaboration with Patricia Patterson, an artist and Farber's wife, resulted in pieces that are never short of brilliant.

Farber is at his best when he is pulling and pushing the reader through a maze of thoughts, imagines and word gymnastics to come out the other end of the essay with a whole new way of looking at things. To say that he is non-linear in this thought process is an understatement. Only a great writer like Farber can pull it off.

And then, he stopped writing about film in the 1970s to devote his remaining years to painting. He said all that he needed to say about film. And he said it in a way that no other writer has done before or since. (Yes, there are many who have tried to imitate his style, but it really can't be done.)

Reading a few pages of Farber is a revelation. Reading a book of Farber can change the way you see film, writing, and the role of the observer/critic in the world.

Congratulations to Library of America for the handsome edition it has published. (Note that it is larger than the typical book that they put out.)

This collection is supposed to be definitive, and it is (in the sense of collecting all of Manny Farber's film writings from the multitude of sources throughout his career, from The Nation and The New Republic in the 1940s, all the way to articles from Artforum and Film Comment in the 1960s and 1970s). But one problem was that in many of the original journals, the editing was sloppy, and there were mistakes, which have simply not been corrected and have simply been perpetuated into the future, as the Library of America continues its slipshod methodology of never having to say it's sorry. Mistakes and important omissions. For example: in a review of the experimental films of the Kinesis group from San Francisco, Farber mentions a filmmaker named "Gordon Belson". There has never been a "Gordon Belson", the name is JORDAN Belson (who just died in August of 2011). This mistake was made in the original review in The Nation of October 11, 1952; it should have been corrected, but how can it be corrected when the editors don't know this is a mistake? For example: in the introduction and the chronology, it is never mentioned that "Manny Farber's" name is Emanuel Farber. An entire book of over 800 pages, and there is no mention (at all) of Mr. Farber's actual name. What kind of editing is this? Aside from that, this is an exhilarating collection, because Manny Farber is one of the most iconoclastic and amusing critics the movies have ever had, a true original.

Manny Farber has been described as the most interesting of American film critics, and although I still prefer Kael and Rosenbaum this volume of collected works is a testament to his unique contribution to the practice of film criticism. In this collection, we finally get the early Farber-his dismissal of bloated epics and self-aggrandizement has true resonance today. Unlike the majority of film commentators, Farber identifies Orson Welles' influence as ultimately nefarious-Farber preferred the 'termite' qualities of a Hawks, a Sturgess, a Mann than the white elephant art of Welles, Hitchcock, and Wilder. However, it is definitely the case that Farber's particular aesthetic was not as interesting as the way he conveyed it-with wandering, almost free-associational digressions and metaphoric gymnastics he could paint the film in a whole new light. It's particulalry interesting to see this method applied to the deified masters of film-to Bergman and Fellini, et al. One cannot help that there is an overly critical mind at work here, yet Farber's approach was not to rank, to argue, or even really to valorize at the end of the day. He was interested in the impressions of the work. It's interesting to see his tone develop, from the wry witticisms in the 40's to the more open and appreciative voice of the 70's, where he began to champion directors like Godard, Fassbinder, and Snow. I cannot say that he had the same desire to truly understand the breadth of film in the way that our contemporary Rosenbaum does, nor did his prose sing in the way that Kael's did, yet his unique way of seeing and transmitting immediate aesthetic impressions was a singular contribution.