This mean-spirited recounting of the life of the expatriate American filmmaker gives a new meaning to the term ``critical biography.'' As profiled by Caute, a prolific author with a specialty in the history of the political left (Sixty-Eight: The Year of the Barricades, 1988, etc.), filmmaker Joseph Losey emerges as a domineering, womanizing sourpuss, a humorless, often dour man with a certain visual flair and a knack for alienating longtime friends. Caute traces Losey's career in a needlessly complicated structure of flash-forwards and flashbacks, beginning with the 1963 triumph of The Servant, his first collaboration with screenwriter Harold Pinter. He then moves back to Losey's childhood in Wisconsin (Losey was one of a trio of great filmmakers from that state who emerged in Hollywood in the '40s, the others being Orson Welles and Nicholas Ray), his years at Dartmouth, his budding radicalism, his stage work in the '30s, and onward to his Hollywood work. Losey was blacklisted because of his Communist affiliations and left the US to avoid a subpoena, continuing his career in England, Italy, and eventually France. Caute follows his growing reputation as a ``European'' filmmaker, his long collaborations with Pinter, Dirk Bogarde, and cinematographer Gerry Fisher. He describes each of Losey's films in detail but seems neither engaged with nor interested in them. The book is a stifling compilation of minutiae, and Caute never lets a statement by his subject go unchallenged. But why should recollections by Losey's sister or by his collaborators be more reliable than Losey's own? The book's elaborately nonchronological structure renders Losey's development as an artist all but opaque, and Caute's literal-minded readings of the films, filled with quibbles about plausibility and faithfulness to details of British class structure, reveal his blindness to the films' own universes. An encyclopedic catalog of Losey's shortcomings and sins, unleavened by any sense of historical context, artistic development, or even sympathy for his work.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-19-506410-0
Page Count: 591
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1994
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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