To the 1991 edition
I’m grateful to the people who took me up on the suggestion that they let me know about errors. I’m grateful also to those who wrote in suggesting titles to be included in this expanded edition. Whenever time and memory made it possible, I’ve complied. Roughly eight hundred titles have been added; they include most of the important films of the ’80s. I know that there are still major omissions from every period, but I’ve done my damnedest. (If I go on, I’ll never stop.)
To the original edition
For a long time, despite persistent requests by the readers of The New Yorker, I resisted the idea of a collection of these notes, which were printed (anonymously) in the Goings On About Town section of the magazine, because they are often written hurriedly and are frequently dependent on my old, spotty memories. Also, there are so many different versions of them that I knew it would be a nightmare to sort out what should be reprinted. (Before I began writing for the magazine I had been doing short descriptions for theatres and colleges. Then, in my first years at the magazine I wrote three notes for each new film, so that they could be rotated, and if I wrote a longish note, this would gradually be cut down if the film continued to play.) And there was another reason: many of the notes are vandalized from my own reviews, and, in my first years at The New Yorker, when the Goings On was expanded to include revivals—partly because of my feeling that readers might be missing out on older films that they hadn’t heard of—I sometimes tried to blend my view of a movie with some of the language from the magazine’s initial review of it. So I’ve had to check those reviews to give the proper credits.
Phrases from other reviewers still appear in eighty-odd cases—from Russell Maloney in Alexander’s Ragtime Band, Here Comes Mr. Jordan, and They Drive By Night; from Theodore Shane in Ben-Hur (1925); from Philip Hamburger in Ivanhoe; from Brendan Gill in The Agony and the Ecstasy, The Appaloosa, Hush … Hush, Sweet Charlotte, Sweet Bird of Youth, and To Kill a Mockingbird; from David Lardner in Air Force, Lady of Burlesque, and This Is the Army, from John Lardner in Kismet (1944) and Step Lively; from Edith Oliver in The Blue Max; from Wolcott Gibbs in Over 21, Practically Yours, and The Thin Man Goes Home;
from John McCarten in Anna and the King of Siam, Autumn Leaves, Blithe Spirit, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1949), Down to the Sea in Ships, Forever Amber, Friendly Persuasion, Green Dolphin Street, Humoresque (1946), It Should Happen to You, Lady in the Lake, Lady on a Train, Leave Her to Heaven, Mighty Joe Young, Miss Sadie Thompson, Night and Day, The Outlaw, Possessed, The Razor’s Edge, The Revolt of Mamie Stover, Ride the Pink Horse, Samson and Delilah, The Sea of Grass, Smash-Llp, The Spiral Staircase, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, The Teahouse of the August Moon, The Ten Commandments, The Three Musketeers (1948), and Titanic; from John Mosher in Blockade, Cleopatra (1934), Dr. Cyclops, Drums Along the Mohawk, The Garden of Allah, The Gracie Allen Murder Case, Hold Your Man, Hollywood Party, The Informer, Intermezzo (1939), Invitation to Happiness, Jamaica Inn, Lillian Russell, The Mad Miss Manton, Made for Each Other (1939). Maid of Salem, Mannequin, The Mark of Zorro (1940), Meet Nero Wolfe, Mrs. Miniver, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Our Modern Maidens, Road to Singapore, The Shining Hour, The Sign of the Cross, Strange Cargo, A Tale of Two Cities (1935), Tarzan and His Mate, This Gun for Hire, Up the River, Weekend in Havana, Zaza, and Zoo in Budapest. Most of the time, these borrowings are no more than a few words, but in some I lifted descriptive passages that I liked. To these predecessors and colleagues I offer my thanks.
There were no strict rules in selecting the batch of brief notices from among the thousands more that I’ve got piled up. I wanted to suggest the range of what movies have done, and so I’ve brought together silent films and talkies, foreign films and American ones, and even some shorts. You won’t find Gone With the Wind or The Wizard of Oz. Omitting them is a gesture: I wouldn’t want anyone to take this book for a complete guide to movies. But I hope that it is a guide to the varieties of pleasures that are available at the movies—from the fun to be had at the juicier forms of trash to the overwhelming emotions that are called up by great work.
For those who may want a fuller analysis of a film: if I have written a review and it’s included in one of my collections, this is indicated at the end of the notice.
No doubt errors have crept in—faulty recollections as well as typos. If you’ll write to me (at The New Yorker, 25 West 43 St., New York, NY 10036), I’ll do my best to see that such mishaps are corrected in any subsequent editions. And if there are films you’d particularly like to see added, please let me know and if (as I hope) I get the chance to expand this book I’ll try to fit them in.
This book is for my daughter Gina and for the one to whom I hope it will prove most useful, her son William.