A wonderful trip down movie Memory Lane.
A legendary actor and director reflects on the innumerable films he watched during his first decades as an audience member.
This first book in Reiner’s (Tell Me a Silly Story, 2010, etc.) two-volume pictorial memoir is essentially an opulently produced memory album commemorating many of the earliest movies he watched in a lifetime devoted to film, with the selections dating from the early 20th century to 1950. The book is heavy and generously oversized, and as memoirs go, it takes the unconventional approach of being 90 percent visual: page after page of large period photographs and gorgeous full-color posters accompanied by minimal text comments from the author along the way. He consistently quotes from reviews of the movies in question, but the draw of the volume remains his own reflections. Some of those reactions are jaundiced (about William Wyler’s 1939 Wuthering Heights, starring Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier, for instance, he grouses: “Fine actors perform in a beautiful love story, but I prefer beautiful love stories where the lovers don’t separate and then die”). And some are winningly idiosyncratic (as when the author presents 1940’s The Mark of Zorro and talks about its famously charismatic star: “Nobody would argue if you said that Tyrone Power was the handsomest leading man of his day and if they did, it’s likely they never saw him in ‘The Mark of Zorro’ ”). A large part of the work’s delight is the way it brings so many of these indelible old movies back into the spotlight, often in touchingly personal tones, as when Reiner mentions 1946’s Stairway to Heaven: “Even though I’m a confirmed atheist I was able to suspend my beliefs so I could enjoy the prospect of climbing the myriad of steps on The Stairway to Heaven so I might, once again, see the deceased members of my beloved family and also my old and dear friends.” The book delivers a series of pleasant surprises, as each film sparks some new memory or quip from a man who’s lived a great deal of Hollywood history himself and frequently recounts meetings with some of the titans of the industry’s golden age.
A wonderful trip down movie Memory Lane.Pub Date: Dec. 31, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9995182-0-5
Page Count: 406
Publisher: Random Content Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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