Film Nation: William Troy on the Cinema, 1933-1935 James R Russo 9781789761733

Notable writers on literature and culture who occasionally penned opinion pieces on the movies prior to World War II include Clifton Fadiman, Mark Van Doren, Lincoln Kirstein, Edmund Wilson, Louise Bogan, and Paul Goodman. All of these critics wrote seriously about things other than the movies. Indeed, the early decades of film criticism drew many moonlighters who tried their hand at it for a few years, then moved on to their preferred metier. And such was the case with William Troy (1903-1961). Troy, a distinguished literary critic whose posthumous Selected Essays won a National Book Award in 1968, was also a much-loved professor at Bennington College, the New School, and New York University. Troy was the film critic of The Nation from 1933 to 1935. To that post he brought an educated, almost professional tone, which he sometimes used for comic effect. He approached each piece of film criticism as an occasion for some larger essayistic rumination. Indeed, his feeling for the carpentry of the short review is superb, as the reader will detect in his pieces on such important films as Bunuel's L'age d'Or, Lang's M, Duvivier's Poil de Carotte, Eisenstein's Que Viva Mexico!, Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc, Cocteau's Blood of a Poet, Pudovkin's Mother, Flaherty's Man of Aran, Renoir's Madame Bovary, and Ford's The Informer. William Troy was thus one of Americas first full-time professional film critics, if not the best of the lot. He deserves some of the attention heretofore reserved for another important early critic, James Agee, who himself began writing movie reviews for The Nation in 1942. Published in conjunction with The Bookman: William Troy on Literature and Criticism, 1927-1950 (ISBN 978-1-78976-172-6), Film Nation is essential reading for cinephiles. Inclusion of a substantive index makes the work highly attractive for classroom adoption in the field of cinema studies.

About the Author
James R. Russo was an independent researcher who holds graduate degrees from Louisiana State University and the University of Richmond. He has taught at those schools as well as Tulane. Russos primary scholarly interests are the cinema and comparative literature. He has recently published The Bookman: William Troy on Literature and Criticism, 1927-1950; Film Nation: William Troy on the Cinema, 1933-1935; and Analyzing Drama: A Student Casebook.


Book Information
ISBN 9781789761733
Author James R Russo
Format Paperback
Page Count 240
Imprint Liverpool University Press
Publisher Liverpool University Press
Weight(grams) 338g