Customer Reviews

Mainly About Lindsay Anderson

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Director and critic Lindsay Anderson was one of the makers of modern British cinema so this memoir "mainly about" him by his school chum and life-long friend Gavin Lambert is necessary reading for all serious students of film. But it is equally compelling an addition to the "literature of creativity" and so of interest to anyone concerned with the phenomenon of artistic production. Anderson had a vivid personality, warm and generous but often combative and sometimes hysterical, a character Lambert renders in telling detail. Anderson's world of theatre and film from the 1950's through the '90s is also drawn in fascinating if hardly encouraging terms.

Gavin Lambert has written many books about the motion picure business, both fictional and non, but this is far and away the most remarkable. A tribute to a great filmmaker and a through examination of world he lived in, it's also a partial autobiography -- with Lambert's digressions on his affair with Nicholas Ray sharply constrating with Anderson's difficulties in having the lover he longed for. Anderson was capable of producing some of the most indelible homoerotic images in the history of the cinema, yet his own life suffered from sexual and emotional constraint.

No one who wants to know about the British cinema, or one of the most remarkable creative talents Great Britain has ever produced, can afford to pass up this book.

British filmmaker Anderson's films were witty social commentaries for the late 20th century, while his documentaries were revealing and educational. Mainly About Lindsay Anderson provides a biographical review of his life and an assessment of his career and achievements, from his early days as a movie-goer to his later influential creations within the industry. Any studying modern film history will find this a fine study.

Too much Lambert: i.e., creaky, stilted, and boring.

His "outing" of the late Nicholas Ray is offensive and exploitive. Moreover, I find it difficult to believe that the explosively talented, sophisticated Ray took Lambert as a lover.