Customer Reviews

Movie Love in the 50s

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I think Harvey's "Romantic Comedy" is one of the best books ever written on Hollywood films, so I really looked forward to reading "Movie Love." I was not disappointed. The new book is as thoughtful and well-written as the previous book. My only complaint is that "Movie Love" is not chronologically organized.

Harvey sets up an opposition between traditional Hollywood cinema and the "new realism" of the Fifties. He comes down in favor of the traditional filmmaking of Douglas Sirk, Alfred Hitchcock and Robert Siodmak, as opposed to the emotionalism of, say, "East of Eden" or other movies influenced by "Method" actors.

Reading "Movie Love in the Fifties" is like listening to a wonderfully informed person talk about the movies he is enthusiastic about. Harvey's style is free of academic jargon, and he makes you remember that people went to movies because they were fun. I found myself dying to see "Vertigo" and "Written on the Wind" again after reading this book, and Harvey has persuaded me that I've got to track down and see "Christmas Holiday," "Lured," and "Imitation of Life" now.

Sandwiched uneasily between the 1940s, when Hollywood reached its wartime peak, and the 1960s, when the studio system finally collapsed, the 1950s was an odd transitional decade in American filmmaking, whose oddity James Harvey explores at length (if not always in depth) in his new book, "Movie Love in the Fifties."

He discusses not only films that cinephiles will be sure to have seen, but a few they're likely never to have heard of (among them the Deanna Durbin vehicle "Christmas Holiday," which Harvey makes sound so perversely engaging you'll regret it's not available on video). His view of the period, however, is both idiosyncratic and incomplete - you'd be hard pressed to realize from Harvey's account, for example, that directors as disparate as Samuel Fuller and Vincente Minnelli were doing some of their best work in the 50s. Some great films of the era -- Minnelli's "Some Came Running," for example -- go unmentioned here.

When Harvey is intrigued by a director, such as Nicholas Ray, Robert Siodmak or the currently trendy Douglas Sirk, his analysis can be enthralling (his take on Sirk's "Imitation of Life" alone is worth the price of the book). But as well as being a little uncertain factually (he has Marilyn Monroe and James Dean dying, respectively, a year earlier and later than they actually did), too many pages are devoted to meandering plot summaries of films all-too-readily available on video.

All told, the book is worth checking out, but you might want to do some judicious skimming.

Although I agree that, for some film fans, Harvey's analysis can be infuriating, this text is one of the more engrossing studies I've come across in recent years. But you should pick it up and browse the chapters to see if the actors, films, and directors he selects are ones that you'd like to read about. Being a huge fan of the majority of the works he does choose to focus on, I find this book to be a valuable companion. His chapter on Out of the Past is entertaining and informative and I love all the attention he gives to Nicholas Ray and Douglas Sirk.

I ordered this book 12/19/08 and received a package 12/31 that was the wrong book (on a completely different topic). I emailed a question to the seller, never heard back, emailed again a week later and received a rapid response that my email would be promptly looked into. Never heard back from the seller. Don't buy from this company.

This is one of the worst film books that I have ever come across and certainly one of the most dishonest. Starting with the title - twice!!! This book is not about "movie love" (the film's discussed are not necessarily romantic films but films from all genres, including films with no love theme at all) and the "fifties" according to Mr. Harvey is the "late forties into the sixties"!!! Huh??? Late 40's Hollywood was outrageously different from the 1950's in terms of motion pictures and themes. To throw them together is as lopsided as discussing silent films of the 1920's and the films of the late 30's as one era. (The back cover incidentally is a romantic pose of Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift in A PLACE IN THE SUN, a film that is mentioned only briefly in the book). This book frankly reads like a bunch of essays the author wrote at various times on various stars or films of the late 40s and 1950's and then compiled into a very incongruous book (I also noticed in his essay on the film CHRISTMAS HOLIDAY he or his publisher neglects to mention the film is a 1944 release which pushes his definition of the "fifties" even further). Mostly concerned with film noir movies, he pushes a ridiculous theory up front trying to tie the film noir damsels of the late 40's into the sugary girls next door stars of the 50's, which basically seems like a desperate attempt to justify discussing such different films from different eras in one book. But worse than all of this is his commentary, which is strictly his own and has not actual critical consensus, then or now. In his eyes, Doris Day is "butch", Marilyn Monroe was "not aging very well" in her last years (mid 30's!!), etc. etc. He slams several popular and acclaimed films in passing and praises some flops, too. Way too much time is spent on that overrated director Douglas Sirk and his various films. How disappointing publishers are knocking out books like this where one individual essentially passes off their opinions as the gospel truth about films when there is a desperate need for more actual film HISTORIES giving us facts and real information while there are still a few people around who worked in that period of Hollywood history who can provide it. Harvey's writing style is stiff and psuedo-academic and sure to make you wonder why anyone would even bother watching old movies if they were as joyless as this. This is most definately not a book for people who love movies.