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I DO AND I DON'T

Name: I DO AND I DON'T
Author: Jeanine Basinger
ISBN: 978-0-307-26916-4

A HISTORY OF MARRIAGE IN THE MOVIES

by Jeanine Basinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 30, 2013

A fascinating, fact-filled story of marriage and the movies.

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Exhaustive, entertaining take on how the silver screen has portrayed wedded bliss and wedded misery.

Marriage was a problem for Hollywood and its main business of putting people in theater seats. True, it was familiar to the audience, but familiarity is not entertainment and escape. So Hollywood had the task of making the mundane exotic while still reassuring the audience that marriage was a good thing. The marriage film “had to become negative about itself in a positive way,” writes noted film historian Basinger (Film Studies/Wesleyan Univ.; The Star Machine, 2009, etc.). Sin and tragedy might occur, but in the end, marriage would endure. With prose both light and irreverent—an irreverence often aimed at the ham-handed plot manipulations the genre would at times use—the author traces how filmmakers tried to achieve these dual purposes. With detailed synopses of films both great and not-so-great—from Gaslight and Adam’s Rib to the Ma and Pa Kettle series—Basinger shows how a small number of plot devices or problems could be endlessly redesigned, reinvented and redeployed to both entertain and reassure. These problems might be realistic—money (too much or too little), infidelity, in-laws, incompatibility, class—or more far-fetched—addiction and murder (“When you marry a murderer, your marriage is in trouble”), but every marriage movie would have at least one of them. The main pleasure here is Basinger’s explication of how the movies and stars of the studio system years made all this work. She also touches on how television took over the marriage story via the sitcom and how today’s marriage films deny the closure and reassurance of their predecessors.

A fascinating, fact-filled story of marriage and the movies.

Pub Date: Jan. 30, 2013

ISBN: 978-0-307-26916-4

Page Count: 432

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: Dec. 1, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2012

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
HOLLYWOOD
by Jeanine Basinger & Sam Wasson

- BOOK REVIEW
THE MOVIE MUSICAL!
by Jeanine Basinger

- BOOK REVIEW
THE STAR MACHINE
by Jeanine Basinger

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NUTCRACKER

by E.T.A. Hoffmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1996

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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

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER AND THE MOUSE KING
by E.T.A. Hoffmann ; adapted by Natalie Andrewson ; illustrated by Natalie Andrewson

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER
by E.T.A. Hoffmann & illustrated by Julie Paschkis

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TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF LADY MENDL (ELSIE DE WOLFE)

by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955

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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.