The Rhapsodes: How 1940s Critics Changed American Film Culture

David Bordwell

apr 2016 · University of Chicago Press

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An engaging look at four pioneering film critics—“besides being a pleasure to read, [it] makes a sophisticated contribution to the study of film criticism” (Cineaste).

In the 1960s, Pauline Kael, Andrew Sarris, and Roger Ebert were three of America’s most popular and influential film critics. But their remarkable contributions to the cinema landscape were deeply influenced by the work of four earlier critics who are too often overlooked: Otis Ferguson, James Agee, Manny Farber, and Parker Tyler.

Throughout the ’30s and ’40s, these pioneering critics scrutinized movies with an intensity not previously seen in popular reviewing. With The Rhapsodes, renowned film scholar and critic David Bordwell restores their work to a wider audience.

Bordwell calls these four critics the “Rhapsodes”, in honor of their passionate and deliberately offbeat prose. Each broke with prevailing currents in criticism, finding new ways to discuss popular films that their contemporaries regarded as trivial. With his customary clarity and brio, Bordwell considers each critics’ writing style, their conceptions of films, and their many quarrels. He then concludes by examining their profound impact on later generations of film writers.

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David Bordwell is the Jacques Ledoux Professor of Film Studies Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. With Kristin Thompson, he is coauthor of Film Art: An Introduction and Film History: An Introduction and the blog Observations on Film Art, which can be found at http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog.