Title: Steven Spielberg A life In Films
Author: Molly Haskell
Stars: 3 1\2 out of 5
Review:
will start by saying I am sorry for the grammar mistakes in this review. I have small humans running around my house daily that I forget to reread what I wrote. Updated REVIEW:
The Author Molly Haskell wrote a story about an Icon in American Film maker who brings his personal history into each one of his movies. I have watched almost all of his films which made me realize I couldn't wait to read this story. As a child I loved Empire of the Sun and now as an adult I am to fully understand this film. Each movie he creates has passion. What I found in this book it Molly Haskell lacked the same passion as she wrote about this "Great American Film Maker."
(After I posted this Review) I went back and reread the book wondering if I wasn't paying enough attention to the story she was trying to create. That was when I started to realize all the details I must have glanced over in my earlier reading. Simple research errors will take an author creditable down. I ended up not finishing the book during my second reading.
I found Molly Haskell writing style bland causing me to put down the book several times. I was unable to connect with the text as I struggle to finish this 240+ page book.
Thank you Netgalley for the advance Copy of this book.
Synopsis:
“Everything about me is in my films,” Steven Spielberg has said. Taking this as a key to understanding the hugely successful moviemaker, Molly Haskell explores the full range of Spielberg’s works for the light they shine upon the man himself. Through such powerhouse hits as Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T., Jurassic Park, and Indiana Jones, to lesser-known masterworks like A.I. and Empire of the Sun, to the haunting Schindler’s List, Haskell shows how Spielberg’s uniquely evocative filmmaking and story-telling reveal the many ways in which his life, work, and times are entwined.
Organizing chapters around specific films, the distinguished critic discusses how Spielberg’s childhood in non-Jewish suburbs, his parents’ traumatic divorce, his return to Judaism upon his son’s birth, and other events echo in his work. She offers a brilliant portrait of the extraordinary director—a fearful boy living through his imagination who grew into a man whose openness, generosity of spirit, and creativity have enchanted audiences for more than 40 years.
Hardcover, 248 pages
Published January 3rd 2017 by Yale University Press
MOLLY HASKELL author and critic, grew up in Richmond, Va., went to Sweet Briar College, the University of London and the Sorbonne before settling in New York. She worked at the French Film Office in the Sixties, writing a newsletter about French films for the New York press and interpreting when directors came to America (this was the height of the Nouvelle Vague) for the opening of their films. She then went to The Village Voice, first as a theatre critic, then as a movie reviewer; and from there to New York Magazine and Vogue.
She has written for many publications, including The New York Times, The Guardian UK, Esquire, The Nation, Town and Country, The New York Observer and The New York Review of Books. She has served as Artistic Director of the Sarasota French Film Festival, on the selection committee of the New York Film Festival, as associate Professor of Film at Barnard and as Adjunct Professor of Film at Columbia University.
She is married to the film critic Andrew Sarris. Her books include From Reverence to Rape: the Treatment of Women in the Movies (1973; revised and reissued in 1989); a memoir, Love and Other Infectious Diseases (1990); and, in 1997, a collection of essays and interviews, Holding My Own in No Man’s Land: Women and Men and Films and Feminists. Her newest book, part of the Yale University Press's American Icon series, is Frankly, My Dear: Gone with the Wind Revisited.
Links:
http://www.mollyhaskell.com/
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