It was Manny Farber’s wish that reviews, essays, or columns that were collected in Negative Space (expanded edition, New York: Da Capo, 1998) should be printed from the revised texts included in that volume. For Farber’s uncollected essays and reviews, this volume prints the texts of their original periodical appearances. These publications used distinct house styles and employed different conventions regarding titles, capitalization, punctuation, and other editorial matters; the extent of their fact-checking of names, dates, and titles also varied. In preserving these texts the present volume does not regularize or otherwise standardize the conventions used in the original texts, or alter irregularities, inconsistencies, and certain incidental errors. In substantive instances in which a mistake might become an impediment to the reader’s comprehension some small errors have been silently corrected.
The following is a list of these pieces with the publications in which they originally appeared (sometimes in more than one installment), along with original title if any and if different from that used in Negative Space:
“Short and Happy”: The New Republic, February 2, 1942.
“Fight Films”: The Nation, May 7, 1949.
“Home of the Brave”: The Nation, May 21, 1949.
“John Huston”: The Nation, June 4, 1949, and July 15, 1950.
“The Third Man”: The Nation, April 1, 1950.
“Frank Capra”: The Nation, June 10, 1950.
“Ugly Spotting”: The Nation, October 28, 1950.
“Val Lewton”: The Nation, April 14, 1951, and September 27, 1952.
“Detective Story”: The Nation, November 24, 1951.
“‘Best Films’ of 1951”: The Nation, January 15, 1952.
“The Gimp”: Commentary, June 1952 (as “Movies Aren’t Movies Anymore”).
“Parade Floats”: The Nation, September 13, 1952.
“Blame the Audience”: Commonweal, December 19, 1952.
“Preston Sturges”: City Lights, Spring 1955 (as “Preston Sturges: Success in the Movies,” with W. S. Poster).
“Hard-Sell Cinema”: Perspectives, November 1, 1957.
“Underground Films”: Commentary, November 1957 (as “Underground Films: A Bit of Male Truth”).
“Nearer My Agee to Thee”: The New Leader, November 8, 1958 (as “Stargazing for Middlebrows”).
“White Elephant Art vs. Termite Art”: Film Culture, Winter 1962.
“The Decline of the Actor”: Commentary, July 1963 (as “Fading Movie Star”).
“The Wizard of Gauze”: Cavalier, February 1966.
“Pish-Tush”: Cavalier, March 1966.
“The Cold That Came into the Spy”: Cavalier, April 1966.
“Day of the Lesteroid”: Cavalier, May 1966.
“The Subverters”: Cavalier, July 1966.
“Rain in the Face, Dry Gulch, and Squalling Mouth”: Cavalier, October 1966.
“New York Film Festival” (1967): Artforum, November 1967.
“Cartooned Hip Acting”: Artforum, December 1967.
“How I Won the War”: Artforum, January 1968.
“Experimental Films”: Artforum, February 1968.
“One-to-One”: Artforum, March 1968.
“Clutter”: Artforum, April 1968, May 1968, and October 1969.
“La Chinoise and Belle de Jour”: Artforum, Summer 1968.
“Carbonated Dyspepsia”: Artforum, September 1968.
“Jean-Luc Godard”: Artforum, October 1968.
“New York Film Festival” (1968): Artforum, November 1968.
“New York Film Festival 1968, Afterthoughts”: Artforum, December 1968.
“Canadian Underground”: Artforum, January 1969.
“Shame”: Artforum, February 1969.
“Howard Hawks”: Artforum, April 1969.
“Luis Buñuel”: Artforum, Summer 1969.
“Samuel Fuller”: Artforum, September 1969.
“New York Film Festival” (1969): Artforum, November 1969.
“Don Siegel”: Artforum, December 1969.
“Michael Snow”: Artforum, January 1970.
“Introduction to Negative Space”: Artforum, March 1970 (as “Film [Space]”).
“Raoul Walsh”: Artforum, November 1971.
“Werner Herzog”: City, July 13, 1975.
“Nicolas Roeg”: City, September 9, 1975 (as “Gothic Lives!”).
“New York Film Festival” (1975): Film Comment, November-December 1975 (as “New York Film Festival Review: Breaking Rules at the Roulette Table”).
“Rainer Werner Fassbinder”: City, July 27, 1975; Film Comment, November-December 1975 (as “Fassbinder”).
“The Power and the Gory”: Film Comment, May-June 1976.
“Kitchen Without Kitsch”: Film Comment, November-December 1976.
The bulk of the essays and reviews reprinted here (except for the items listed above) are taken from the periodicals where they first appeared:
From “With Camera and Gun” (March 23, 1942) through “Mugging Main Street” (January 6, 1947): The New Republic.
From the review of Devil in the Flesh (June 18, 1949) through the essay on movie gimmicks and seven films of 1953 (January 9, 1954): The Nation.
From “Bathroom Mirror Sinceratease” (January 2, 1959) through “A Director’s Skill With Terror, Geography and Truth” (November 23, 1959): The New Leader.
From “Nearer My Agee to Thee” (December 1965) to the review of Red Desert, Mademoiselle, A Man and a Woman, and Masculine Feminine (December 1966): Cavalier.
“Films at Canadian Artists ’68”: Artscanada, February 1969.
The reviews of Two Rode Together, Coogan’s Bluff, Bullitt, etc.; the ten best films of 1969; Loving, Zabriskie Point, Topaz, The Damned, Au Hasard Balthazar; Ozu’s films; “The Venice Film Festival”: Artforum.
“Badlands, Mean Streets, and The Wind and the Lion”; “Nashville: Good Ole Country Porn”; “The New Breed of Filmmakers: A Multiplication of Myths”: from City.
“Munich Films, 1967-1977: Ten Years that Shook the Film World” (Guggenheim application): Typescript as submitted to the foundation.
“Mrs. Parsons etc.”: The New Republic, 1944.
“The Hidden and the Plain”: Typescript; written for J. P. Gorin at Vienna International Film Festival, October 15–27, 2004.
Portions of the editor’s introduction were previously published as “The Farber Equation” in the exhibition catalog Manny Farber: About Face (La Jolla, Calif.: Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, 2003).
Following Manny Farber’s wishes, this book does not include his unsigned short reviews for Time, written during late 1949 through early 1950; because his copy was so often extensively rewritten by editors, usually to comply with Time editorial style, he did not consider them among his own film writings. Farber was hired as a writer in the Time cinema department on August 18, 1949, and discharged on January 24, 1950. No Farber Time drafts exist, but reviews as ultimately printed are accessible by film title at TIME.com. The annotated bound volumes in the Time Inc. Archives indicate that Manny Farber is the author of the reviews of the following films:
Sept. 12, 1949: Sword in the Desert (George Sherman); Sept. 19, 1949: White Heat (Raoul Walsh), That Midnight Kiss (Norman Taurog), Saints and Sinners (Leslie Arliss); Sept. 26, 1949: Germany Year Zero (Roberto Rossellini), The Secret Garden (Fred M. Wilcox); Oct. 10, 1949: Pinky (Elia Kazan), Thieves’ Highway (Jules Dassin); Oct. 17, 1949: I Married a Communist (Robert Stevenson); Oct. 24, 1949: The Heiress (William Wyler); Oct. 31, 1949: Beyond the Forest (King Vidor), Father Was a Fullback (John M. Stahl); Nov. 7, 1949: Red, Hot and Blue (John Farrow), Tokyo Joe (Stuart Heisler), Christopher Columbus (David MacDonald); Nov. 14, 1949: Battleground (William Wellman), Everybody Does It (Edmund Goulding), That Forsyte Woman (Compton Bennett); Nov. 28, 1949: They Live by Night (Nicholas Ray), Adam’s Rib (George Cukor); Dec. 5, 1949: Always Leave Them Laughing (Roy Del Ruth), Tension (John Berry), All the King’s Men (Robert Rossen); Dec. 12, 1949: The Bicycle Thief (Vittorio De Sica), Intruder in the Dust (Clarence Brown), The Story of Seabiscuit (David Butler), The Doctor and the Girl (Curtis Bernhardt); Dec. 19, 1949: The Great Lover (Alexander Hall), Oh, You Beautiful Doll (John M. Stahl), Holiday Affair (Don Hartman); Dec. 26, 1949: Bride for Sale (William D. Russell); Jan. 23, 1950: And Baby Makes Three (Henry Levin), Tell It to the Judge (Norman Foster), The Lady Takes a Sailor (Michael Curtiz).
Farber on Film is inevitably a collective venture, and I’m happy to say the book discovered many friends along the way. Manny Farber approved the individual contents of the essays, reviews, and columns during my frequent discussions with him over the years, and my greatest debt here is to him—not least for teaching me how to look, how to see—and to Patricia Patterson, herself also a daring, beautiful artist and writer, and of course co-author of all his writing starting with the Artforum columns in 1967. For introducing me to Manny and Patricia I wish to celebrate Tom Luddy, and for their spirited conversation and abiding support in all matters Farber I’m immensely grateful to my confederates, companions, and confidantes: J. P. Gorin, Kent Jones, Edith Kramer, Alice Waters, and Robert Walsh, gifted editor of the expanded edition of Negative Space, and a resourceful and tireless participant in the creation of this book.
I wish to signal my appreciation to the staff of The Library of America for their signature skill, dedication, and care. I want to thank my remarkable agents, Glen Hartley and Lynn Chu. For his role in an earlier conception of this project I thank Lindsay Waters. My gratitude to John Radziewicz at Da Capo Press for his timely and generous ministrations. At the New School, I wish to honor my research students, Peter Drake, Elizabeth Schambelan, Benjamin Birdie, Michal Lando, Yotam Hadass, Justin Taylor, and Brent Kite.
Years ago Artforum and Bookforum kindly asked me to speak on Manny Farber’s film criticism and paintings, and I want to express my indebtedness to Knight Landesman, Andrew Hultkrans, and Eric Banks for that crucial occasion en route to this book. Similarly, I want to thank Stephanie Hanor and Hugh M. Davies of the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego for asking me to contribute to the catalog for the retrospective Manny Farber About Face.
I wish to dedicate my part in Farber on Film to my wife, Kristine Harris, and to my friend, Patricia Patterson.
Robert Polito