An ambitious, occasionally affecting, but mostly
annoying/embarrassing free-associative mishmash of autobiography
and cine-sociology. Movie critic Rosenbaum grew up, circa 1950, in
a small Alabama town where his grandfather and father ran the local
moviehouses, and his personality is ostensibly wrapped up in the
many films he saw. Thus, the largest chunk of this book consists of
Rosenbaum watching On Moonlight Bay (Doris Day et al., 1951) in
1977 California, summarizing and critique-ing every scene, and
interweaving childhood reactions to seeing the movie. A notion with
potential, perhaps - but Rosenbaum sends it over the edge with
unselective tedium, laughable neo-Parker-Tyler analysis ("Perhaps
we can even say that what the three males really want is to fuck
each other"), and constant switching between first, second, and
third person. . . resulting in such gruesome convolutions as:
"Jonny, you, and I. . . are all trapped there, trying to make each
other's acquaintance and to meet Doris Day and her family, too. I
know Jonny, but he doesn't recognize me; we don't know you, and you
don't know us. But maybe we can all meet at the Booth Tarkington
house." And this painfully pretentious approach prevails
throughout: there's a mystical figure called "the Conquistador" who
tells poor Jonny what to do; Rosenbaum finds sexual metaphors for
his movie fandon ("Citizen Kane. . . had taken me by force from
behind"); he has a mystical thing about Debra Paget in Bird of
Paradise; and there are obligatory hash-smoking, acid-dropping,
child-of-the-Sixties sequences. Still, a few glimmers of what this
book could have been do come through - in a letter written to his
mother (who was institutionalized up North while Jonny substituted
screen ladies); in memories of his grandfather and father (who
wrote a weekly ad-column in the local paper). And the occasional
capsule put-downs of recent movies are shrewd (unlike a gushy
salute to the audience-participation Rocky Horror movie scene at
H.Y.'s 8th Street Playhouse). Unfortunately, all these effective
moments here are drowned in Rosenbaum's awesome self-indulgence -
and, with confusing private references and every textual mannerism
in the underground book, this ends up being chiefly for members of
the immediate family. (Kirkus Reviews)
"Moving Places" is the brilliant account of a life steeped in and
shaped by the movies - part autobiography, part film analysis, and
part social history. Jonathan Rosenbaum, one of America's most
gifted film critics, began his moviegoing in the 1950s in
small-town Alabama, where his family owned and managed a chain of
theaters. Starting in the Deep South of his boyhood, Rosenbaum
leads us through a series of "screen memories", making us aware of
movies as markers of the past - when and where we saw them, with
whom, and what we did afterward. The mood swings easily from
sensual and poignant regret to screwball exuberance, punctuated
along the way by a tribute to the glamorous Grace Kelly of "Rear
Window", a meditation on "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" and its
improbable audience-community, and an extended riff on Rosenbaum's
encounters with "On Moonlight Bay". Originally published in 1980,
"Moving Places" is reissued now both as a companion volume to the
author's latest book and as a means of introducing a new generation
of film buffs to this unique, often humorous exploration of one
man's life at the movies.
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