Published to coincide with the film’s 75th anniversary, this book is a gold mine for fans.
Everything you wanted to know about one of the greatest films of all time—and then some.
Orson Welles (1915-1985) could read when he was 2 and discuss politics at 3, and he wrote his first play at 9—or maybe that’s just a myth he started. But it’s widely accepted that the first film Welles co-wrote, directed, produced, and starred in is one of the truly great films. Lebo (The Godfather Legacy, 19997, etc.) agrees, and he makes a convincing case with this fascinating, in-depth story of the film’s making. Not only does he describe how the film was made, from beginning to end and afterward, but he also includes any film lover’s candy: cast and production credits, a conversation with Bernard Herrmann, who did the score, a detailed scene-by-scene guide (with running times), the film’s budget (actor Everett Sloane, who played Mr. Bernstein, received a $2,400 payment to shave his head), and more. After successes in radio and drama, the 25-year-old wunderkind was able to negotiate a contract with RKO to make two movies with the “most liberal creative terms ever granted to a director working within the confines of the traditional studio system.” Lebo skillfully sorts through the controversy of who exactly wrote the Kane screenplay. Herman J. Mankiewicz and John Houseman began work on a screenplay loosely based on the life of William Randolph Hearst. There were multiple drafts, with Welles editing each along the way. Commenting on the unconventional and difficult filming techniques used, cinematographer Gregg Toland said it “had to be done!” When film editor Robert Wise reviewed daily rushes, he felt they were on to “something very special.” Extensive quotes from many participants add a real immediacy to the story, and Lebo splendidly chronicles all the drama, infighting, ups and downs, excitement, and genius that went into creating Welles’ masterpiece.
Published to coincide with the film’s 75th anniversary, this book is a gold mine for fans.Pub Date: April 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-250-07753-0
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2016
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
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