Customer Reviews

Movies About the Movies: Hollywood Reflected

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This is one of the best books to tackle the subject of Hollywood. Ever since the beginning of motion pictures, Hollywood has made movies critisizing, and complimenting itself. The movies range from musicals, to comedies, to deep drama. This expertly written book covers movies such as Singin' In the Rain (a musical comedy about two stars making the transition from silent films to talkies), What Price Hollywood? (The first talking picture to tackle the subject of Hollywood- later remade as A Star is Born), Sullivan's Travels (a hilarious comedy about a comedy director who wants to make dramas), and Sunset Boulevard ( a deep Billy Wilder drama about a crazed silent star who hires a screenwriter to write her a comeback script). It is a must have for any fan of old Hollywood!

Although the subject of this book is fascinating and Ames' ideas & theories, in his context of film history, are quite brilliant, his writing style is very painful to get through. I'm a retired editor & H.S. English teacher, but he had me running to the dictionary more than once, sometimes without findings; his vocabulary is unnecessarily obscure/arcane, at least for the general reader. His sentence structure, although always technically correct, required me to reread many portions several times just to get a simple point. Such content could have been expressed much more simply without compromising meaning.
Although I bought the book for his informed opinions, I had to wonder if he sometimes inferred overly complex/incorrect intent on the part of film creators in order to fit his analyses (vs. what was in the films by pure accident or what was mangled by the group creation process). I wondered if he sometimes cared too much about creating a neat & tidy (albeit possibly incorrect) interpretation rather than simply enjoying the films for what they are: not always so neat. I.e., I felt he overanalyzed & overcomplicated at times what might have been intended for simple entertainment (or what had no clear-cut intent intact by the end of production).
If I were leaving his classroom after a lecture, I might be muttering something like "What a windbag!" This book is worth reading, but you will be glad when you're done (I started counting "pages left" early).