Bergman, Fellini, Kurosawa: The Foreign Film in America
by James N. Selvidge.
(2008, 393 pp., 63 b/w and 330 color photographs, three indices;
publ. Truline Legacy Inc., Burlington, WA.,
http://www.foreignfilmsinamerica.com, ISBN 978-0-9818679-0-8)
Some call them art films, some call them foreign films, but I think we all recognize them when we see them --- if only because many of them are in a language other than English and come with subtitles. And now a book has emerged --- written by someone who was there and can tell you how it all started. Back in the political hot bed of the 1950's and 1960's, Hollywood did its best to ban their importation, distribution and exhibition, presumably because they doubted the public was interested, but more so because they feared the McCarthyites who branded such films a part of the Communist conspiracy. Together with Cy Harvey and a few other radicals, James set out to form his own art theater circuit in Seattle, which soon became the national battle field for film censorship. The battle went from challenging the Seattle City Council and Board of Theater Supervisors all the way up to the Supreme Court. The first third of this book is a detailed history of these two decades, while the remainder profiles the 330 greatest films of this era (200 of which are currently available on DVD) --- each with a color photo of the poster. Additionally there are three indices: general, director and film. As an aside, I spoke with James by phone a while back, and he told me an interesting story about a frequent patron of one of his Seattle theaters. She was a young college-age white woman who had developed a strong attraction to a black foreign actor in the films, and often talked to James about this. Years later Stanley Ann Dunham became the mother of our first black President, Barack Obama.
Tom Elliott
The Book Flood Continues
MENSA BULLETIN - April-May 2009 Number 524
THE MAGAZINE OF AMERICAN MENSA
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