Watching Them Be

September 1, 2014
In this sometimes tedious, sometimes brilliant, but mostly uneven book, film critic Harvey (Movie Love in the Fifties) takes up James Baldwin's commentâ"One does not go to see them act, one goes to watch them be"âand embarks on a chronicle of film history seen through this lens. Part film aesthetics and part personal reflection, Harvey's book covers "icons" like Greta Garbo and John Wayne, through "realists" like Robert DeNiro and Robert Altman's "Nashville", to "transcenders" like Ingrid Bergman and Robert Bresson's "Balthazar". On watching Quentin Tarantino's "Jackie Brown", Harvey observes, for example, that "the enforced intimacy you have with subsumes almost everything else going on." Harvey luminously reflects on De Niro's presence in "Once Upon a Time in America": "De Niro all but holds this massive movie together not only by his acting but by his presence and intensity." On Garbo: "Her fame was inseparable from her riddleâ¦Garbo seemed to have taken into the movies." Whether you agree with Harvey or not, his book does drive you to watch the films he discusses once again or for the first time.

May 15, 2014
A movie critic considers the mystery of star power.Playwright and essayist Harvey (Emeritus, Film and Literature/SUNY, Stony Brook; Movie Love in the Fifties, 2001, etc.) takes his title from James Baldwin's observation about movie stars: "One does not go to see them act; one goes to watch them be." A star's personality, the author contends, transcends particular performances to generate "enforced intimacy" with the viewer. "A screen star," he writes, "generally appropriates her role rather than disappearing into it (as an ordinary actor might do)." Greta Garbo, for example, "offered something that approached sublimity," which emerged even in the "dead weight" of a movie like Anna Karenina (1935). Ingrid Bergman shone like "a goddess" even when miscast, "because it's her more than the character...that you respond to." Beginning with stars of the 1930s and '40s, Harvey analyzes performances by Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Bette Davis, John Wayne, Bergman and Charles Laughton. In a section on "realists," he turns to Robert De Niro, notably his role as Noodles in Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in America (1984); performances by Lily Tomlin and Ronee Blakley in Robert Altman's Nashville (1975); and Pam Grier, the raunchy heroine of Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown (1997). Harvey also looks at directors such as Jean-Luc Godard, whose masterful close-ups celebrated star quality, and Carl Theodor Dreyer, "arguably the preeminent 'religious' filmmaker of our modern cinema time." He cites Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), in which Maria Falconetti had an "overwhelming star turn" as Joan. "There is something religious about the movie experience," the author writes, and he ends his film journey with a worshipful exegesis of Robert Bresson's Balthazar (1966), in which the star is a donkey.Harvey's meticulously close reading of movies illuminatingly analyzes both the "controlling sensibility" of stars and the viewer's process of "intense watching."

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July 1, 2014

The best film criticism comes from a personal point of view, and playwright, essayist, and critic Harvey (Movie Love in the Fifties; Romantic Comedy in Hollywood) has a uniquely personal approach that goes much deeper than a study of plot or structure. He examines a star's onscreen presence and what those actors truly communicate through their performance, as well as how directors frame those performances. Through a wide range of examples, from classic actors such as Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich to more intriguing choices such as the casts of Jackie Brown (1997) and Nashville (1975), his perception takes readers beyond the reading experience and allows us to see film with our own version of his awareness. His chapter on Robert Bresson's 1966 film Au Hasard Balthazar and its eponymous lead actor--a donkey--is the perfect way to prove his point about the power of an on-screen presence, as Balthazar has nothing but presence; he cannot speak or act. Yet the manner in which Bresson frames him on film conveys feelings as potent as when Garbo stares out to sea contemplating both her past and her future. VERDICT This is a very readable and fascinating look at the power of cinema, though its main appeal with be to serious students of film.--Peter Thornell, Hingham P.L., MA

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