Pleasures Of The Farber

Joseph Wiseman demonstrates the "palms up" gesture for Kirk Douglas and William Bendix in William Wyler's Detective Story, 1951; Michael Strong, behind Wiseman, is clearly impressed. 

One thing that readers new to Manny Farber ought to understand right off the bat: you are more likely to disagree with him more than any other film critic you will come to respect and love. "A...cavalry film that is like an endless frontier-day pageant, [title temporarily redacted] has the discombobulated effect of a Western dreamt by a kid snoozing at an Esso station in Linden, New Jersey." Said cavalry film also has a "mentally retarded quality" and features, among other non-savory figures, "a screaming little Bowery Boy in braids who's only bearable in the last shot when the camera just shows his legs hanging limply from a lynching tree." Ouch. The film in question is, as it happens, Saint John Ford's 1961 Two Rode Together, one of his problematic but still revered late pictures, and one that this correspondent still regard with affection. Farber's assessment no doubt pleases his fellow Ford sceptic James Wolcott, one of the many luminaries who provide back-cover blurbs for the gargantuan new Library of America collection Farber On Film: The Complete Film Writing Of Manny Farber. But I doubt it finds much favor with fellow blurber Martin Scorsese. Who actually had to lie down for a lot worse, as the Farber newbie will see once he or she gets to an essay co-written with Patricia Patterson entitled "The Power And The Gory" late in the book. Farber's takedown was of course written well before Ford's work was deemed canonical, but feisty would-be critics who want to draw attention to themselves by cocking a snoot at various and sundry putative classics can draw an object lesson from such Farber vitriol in any event: that is, if you can't actually concoct a supportable argument, you should at least try to make up for it with some entertaining writing. 

"Battle or no battle, that the movies are an art is a fact." No one since Vachel Lindsay was as prepared and qualified to argue this position than Farber was, and Farber wrote the above sentence in a 1944 essay called "The Happiness Boys." If you're inclined to mine through this collection piecemeal, it's a good place to start. But on every page there's some vivid reminder that criticism is, pace Jeff Jarvis and the whole "everyone's a critic" crowd, more than just opinion-mongering; that it is a practice and a discipline, and that those facts don't have to inhibit it from also being a lot of raucous fun. And the above-mentioned object lessons almost never stop.

For instance,from his review of Wyler's Detective Story, this great wad of chewy verbiage that also demonstrates the advantage a culturally-engaged New-York based film critic could wield over his less plugged-in peers: "Among this traffic is a string of recent Broadway exiles: Lee Grant as a man-hungry shoplifter with a sinuously unfeminine wiggle, a parrotlike head, and some other not quite hilarious tricks, which she moiders with her East Side dialect; Joseph Wiseman, a degenerate cat-burglar who sweeps into the familiar Jewish palms-up gesture as no man ever did before—yet he seems to have genuine pool-hall cynicism and chilling scorn for the 'artists' with whom he is working; Michael Strong, Wiseman's dumb crony, who crosses the affectations of a slack-jawed delinquent with those of a hep cat, doing this with glib exaggeration that makes actor seem more confused than character." One wonders, today, how many contemporary admirers of, say, Michael Shannon have seen even an iota of his stage work, and could bring their knowledge of it to bear on any characterization of his movie performances.

And the book is of course replete with examples of his kicking critical conventional wisdom.He resisted the knee-jerk condemnations of Antonioni's Zabriskie Point, which were rife at the time. Here's his brief take on the film, coming after a lengthy consideration of Irvin Kershner's fantastic Loving: "Slugged by critics, this continuous photographic lyricism shouldn't have been treated as a realistic portrait of America. Among the things excoriated were a non-actress (Daria Halprin) with great legs, tan, and sleeveless sued-colored dress, a dustbowl section with a perfectly chosen location and imaginatively used kids, and  a handsome lyrical view of America right through the fantastically photographed shots of 1970 culture floating and shooting through the air."

I suppose I should here apologize for the truly wretched play on an old Phil Ochs title that gives this post its heading. But I made it not just because I could, but because Farber himself was hardly above such errant punnery. A piece called "The Wizard of Gauze" is followed in this collection by one called "Pish-Tush," an epic excoriation of British actress Rita Tushingham, which makes my own weird fulminations against, say, Jennifer Aniston look like kid's stuff indeed. 

I'm not through with Farber; I'm hoping to do a re-assessment of his top films of 1951 but  am having trouble tracking copies of some down. Anybody with a line on The Prowler, The People Against O'Hara, and Appointment With Danger, if they could please drop me a line on my mac.com account, it would be much appreciated. I'll likely go ahead with the piece even if I can't get hold of those pictures, but it would be better if I could. Thanks. 

Comments

[Joseph "Jon" Lanthier]

Well, excellent observations thus far -- I'm moving through the LoA Farber book myself as we speak. And no need to apologize for the Ochs pun -- after all, I'm sure it wouldn't interest anybody outside of a small circle of Glenns anyhow...

[D Cairns]

That Detective Story review always bugged me a little because he goes into a thing about how the rooms are full of mist, to give it "some outdoor excitement." I've never been able to see this mist. If I did, I would probably assume it was meant to represent cigarette smoke or something, rather than fog. But I can't see it at all!

There are these odd moments with Farber where I just don't get what he saw, or whether he saw it, or what...

He's a superb writer, and he opens up lots of new ways into the films he discusses, and usually his powers of observation are very strong, but sometimes...

[Arthur S.]

My favourite essay of Farber is where he talks about 70s films where he discusses Fassbinder, Altman, Straub and Akerman. The way he talks about the composition and frontal arrangement has stayed with me.

[otherbill]

A million thanks for this post. I had no idea there was a LoA edition of Farber coming out. My next paycheck just got a little bit taken off the top.

I don't like to engage in hyperbole, so I'll just say that I think THE THIRD MAN is about the best thing ever done by humans. Encountering Farber's takedown of said film in Negative Space is something I'll never forget. However, per the thesis of this post, it did teach me that I could disagree completely with a critic I respected without being driven into a blithering rage (hey there, Pauline).

I seem to recall reading an interview with Farber a few years back (Film Comment?) in which he mentioned that he and Patterson really wanted to do an in-depth piece on MISS CONGENIALITY. Does anyone else remember this? Cuz I just reread that sentence and it sure seems like the result of an acid trip.

[Roger]

Hi Glenn, All 3 of those titles are obtainable. 'The Prowler' is on ebay now (trader: noschooltoday). My contacts Eric ('O'Hara') and Bob ('Appointment') should be able to help - I'll ask them to contact you.
Cheers, Roger