William Troy (1903-1961) was a highly regarded literary critic during the 1930s and 1940s. Among his contemporaries, he ranked with Edmund Wilson, Kenneth Burke, and F. O. Matthiessen. Indeed, in the preface to the posthumous, 1968 publication of his Selected Essays, which won a National Book Award, Allen Tate placed Troy among the handful of the best critics of this century. Troys criticism was informed by an intelligence so balanced that, where many theoreticians took up positions in logical traps, he easily avoided them. At the very moment when scholars and critics were either treating literature like polemics or investigating ideas as if belles-lettres were a sub-category of history or philosophy, Troy acknowledged both the centrality of literary ideas and their distinction from ideas in other forms. When confronted with a text, he analysed it with a firm sense of its inherent meaning and of its cultural implications, in a style that expresses seriousness of commitment precisely and clearly. The Bookman presents a selection of Troys remaining writings on such major literary figures as Henry James, e. e. cummings, Ernest Hemingway, Edith Wharton, F. Scott Fitzgerald, T. S. Eliot, Andre Gide, William Faulkner, James Joyce, Albert Camus, Jean Cocteau, Willa Cather, W. H. Auden, Virginia Woolf, and Emile Zola. Troy produced a body of work that is timeless, permanent, and exemplary -- perhaps as much as, if not more so than, the work of such other critical contemporaries of his as the Anglo-Americans Yvor Winters, I. A. Richards, William Empson, George Jean Nathan, and R. P. Blackmur. Published in conjunction with Film Nation: William Troy on the Cinema, 19331935 (ISBN 978-1-78976-173-3), The Bookman is clear evidence of Troys role as one of the foremost critics of his age. Inclusion of a substantive index makes the work an essential and accessible gateway to a wide range of literary criticism.

This first comprehensive English collection of the interviews of Jacques Rivette (19282016) documents his career through chronology, filmography, bibliography, and image stills. A comprehensive introduction places this work in the wider context of twentieth-century social change. Rivettes films, like many of the works of the French New Wave, seem to have avoided the aging process entirely, remaining as playful, fresh, and quietly spectacular as the day they were made. Indeed, his body of work may be the most impressive of the French New Wave. Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974) has been recognized as possibly the best film to emerge from the post-New Wave era, even as Paris Belongs to Us (1961) is one of the best pictures to emerge from the New Wave itself. Rivette was hardly the most prolific director, however, and the length of his films has often counted against him. Nonetheless, his clinical, self-reflexive essays in film form reveal him as a cinematic purist whose commitment to the celluloid muse hardly diminished from the heady days of the early 1950s to the end of his career in 2009. Beyond inspiring the New Wave movement and continuing to reflect, and reflect on, its central tenets, Rivettes enduring contribution to the history of film is unquestionably evident in his sensitive treatment of the histories and destinies of women, especially through strong roles for actresses. During the six decades of his career, nonetheless, he struck a subtle balance not only between female and male characters, but also between political and personal obsession, between myth and fiction, between theater and cinema, in films that, in addition to having influenced such contemporary filmmakers as Claire Denis, Jim Jarmusch, Olivier Assayas, and David Lynch, continue to redefine the art of cinema around the world.

Analyzing Film: A Student Casebook is a film textbook containing fifteen essays about sixteen historically and artistically significant films made between 1920 and 1990. This casebook is geographically diverse, with sixteen countries represented: Germany, Russia, Spain, France, the United States, Denmark, Japan, India, England, Italy, Sweden, Czechoslovakia, Cuba, Hungary, Australia, and China. The essays in Analyzing Film are clear and readable-sophisticated and weighty, yet not overly technical or jargon-heavy. The book's critical apparatus features credits, images, and bibliographies for all films discussed, filmographies for all the directors, a chronology of film theory and criticism, a glossary of film terms, a guide to film analysis, and a list of topics for writing and discussion, together with a comprehensive index.

A Russian Jew who spent most of his life in England and America, Alexander Bakshy (1885-1949) was a theater critic and literary translator. He was also an innovative theorist who applied to theater the discourse of self-reflexive modernism, prizing anti-illusionist medium-awareness. Indeed, he was something of a pioneer in the area of "spectatorship" and medium-awareness, going so far as to argue in favor of the modernist idea of overt presentationalism on stage as opposed to disingenuous representationalism. One can see this presentational, or anti-illusionist, argument at work in a number of pieces in Drama According to Alexander Bakshy, 1916-1946-an edited collection that also includes a lengthy contextualizing introduction and a comprehensive bibliography of this Russian emigre's writings. Alexander Bakshy's writings deserve to be better known, for his sound critical-theoretical approach remains relevant to contemporary aesthetic debate. Like many performance-minded scholars today, Bakshy had a daredevil willingness to assess the theater seriously and to encourage the kind of experimentation that promised to advance the expressiveness of dramatic art. Yet surprisingly, the full applicability of many of his pioneering ideas about the drama has yet to be tested-a disheartening state of affairs that, one hopes, the present volume will help to remedy.

Robert Hatch's critical life spanned five decades. Starting in 1947 and continuing until 1984, he wrote about drama (and film) for The New Republic, The Nation, Theatre Arts, The Reporter, and Horizon. Along with John Simon, Robert Brustein, Richard Gilman, and Stanley Kauffmann, Hatch was one of the most potent, influential authors in the New York school of twentieth-century American arts criticism. With style and erudition Open Hatch discusses plays and productions from the following countries: England, the United States, France, Russia, Ireland, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Czechoslovakia, Norway, Greece, and Australia. Among the many works discussed are The Master Builder, by Henrik Ibsen; The Three Sisters, by Anton Chekhov; Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, by Tennessee Williams; The Bourgeois Gentleman, by Molière; The Iceman Cometh, by Eugene O'Neill; Measure for Measure, by William Shakespeare; The Good Woman of Setzuan, by Bertolt Brecht; Exiles, by James Joyce; Endgame, by Samuel Beckett; The Blacks, by Jean Genet; The Caretaker, by Harold Pinter; Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, by Edward Albee; Dutchman, by LeRoi Jones; and Leonce and Lena, by Georg Büchner. Also included in Open Hatch are articles on the following subjects: the idea of repertory; the Living Theatre; the Actors' Studio; Broadway and Off-Broadway; melodrama; and scene design. In addition, one may find in this rich collection bio-critical pieces on such figures as Tyrone Guthrie, Orson Welles, and John Arden. The precision, wit, and wisdom of Hatch's writing chime in Open Hatch, as he reveals his sense of cultural mission - and love of all the arts - by applying to theater and drama the same high standards that are applied to fiction, poetry, art, and music.

This play-analysis textbook contains 50 short essays on geographically diverse, historically significant dramas -- among them Major Barbara, Our Town, Hamlet, A Streetcar Named Desire, Romeo and Juliet, Miss Julie, Electra, Death of a Salesman, The Balcony, The Cherry Orchard, Mother Courage, The Merry Wives of Windsor, and Old Times. The essays are supported by a Step-by-Step Approach to Play Analysis, a Glossary of Dramatic Terms, Study Guides, Topics for Writing and Discussion, Bibliographical Resources, and a comprehensive Index. Written for university and advanced high school students, these critical essays provide practical models to aid and promote writing and analytical skills. The author is a close reader committed to a detailed yet objective examination of the structure, style, imagery, and language of a play. He is concerned with dramatic analysis that can be of benefit to directors, designers, and even actors. Analysis of character, action, dialogue, and setting can thus be translated into concepts for theatrical production. The three key benefits of ANALYZING DRAMA are: 1. Most so-called play analysis texts are books about the methods and techniques of play analysis but contain few (if any) actual play analyses. The book describes the methods and techniques of play analysis while at the same time providing numerous examples of such analysis. 2. The Topics for Writing and Discussion and Study Guides provide a wide range of set tasks for students. 3. Readings are not biased by any particular social or political doctrine. Aimed at students, teachers, educated readers, and drama aficionados with an interest in world drama in particular and drama studies in general, as well as at theatregoers with an interest in the practice of play analysis and criticism.

This play-analysis textbook contains 50 short essays on geographically diverse, historically significant dramas -- among them Major Barbara, Our Town, Hamlet, A Streetcar Named Desire, Romeo and Juliet, Miss Julie, Electra, Death of a Salesman, The Balcony, The Cherry Orchard, Mother Courage, The Merry Wives of Windsor, and Old Times. The essays are supported by a Step-by-Step Approach to Play Analysis, a Glossary of Dramatic Terms, Study Guides, Topics for Writing and Discussion, Bibliographical Resources, and a comprehensive Index. Written for university and advanced high school students, these critical essays provide practical models to aid and promote writing and analytical skills. The author is a close reader committed to a detailed yet objective examination of the structure, style, imagery, and language of a play. He is concerned with dramatic analysis that can be of benefit to directors, designers, and even actors. Analysis of character, action, dialogue, and setting can thus be translated into concepts for theatrical production. The three key benefits of ANALYZING DRAMA are: 1. Most so-called play analysis texts are books about the methods and techniques of play analysis but contain few (if any) actual play analyses. The book describes the methods and techniques of play analysis while at the same time providing numerous examples of such analysis. 2. The Topics for Writing and Discussion and Study Guides provide a wide range of set tasks for students. 3. Readings are not biased by any particular social or political doctrine. Aimed at students, teachers, educated readers, and drama aficionados with an interest in world drama in particular and drama studies in general, as well as at theatregoers with an interest in the practice of play analysis and criticism.

Notable writers on literature and culture who occasionally penned opinion pieces on the movies prior to World War II include Clifton Fadiman, Mark Van Doren, Lincoln Kirstein, Edmund Wilson, Louise Bogan, and Paul Goodman. All of these critics wrote seriously about things other than the movies. Indeed, the early decades of film criticism drew many moonlighters who tried their hand at it for a few years, then moved on to their preferred metier. And such was the case with William Troy (19031961). Troy, a distinguished literary critic whose posthumous Selected Essays won a National Book Award in 1968, was also a much-loved professor at Bennington College, the New School, and New York University. Troy was the film critic of The Nation from 1933 to 1935. To that post he brought an educated, almost professional tone, which he sometimes used for comic effect. He approached each piece of film criticism as an occasion for some larger essayistic rumination. Indeed, his feeling for the carpentry of the short review is superb, as the reader will detect in his pieces on such important films as Bunuels Lge dor, Langs M, Duviviers Poil de Carotte, Eisensteins Que Viva Mexico!, Dreyers The Passion of Joan of Arc, Cocteaus Blood of a Poet, Pudovkins Mother, Flahertys Man of Aran, Renoirs Madame Bovary, and Fords The Informer. William Troy was thus one of Americas first full-time professional film critics, if not the best of the lot. He deserves some of the attention heretofore reserved for another important early critic, James Agee, who himself began writing movie reviews for The Nation in 1942. Published in conjunction with The Bookman: William Troy on Literature and Criticism, 19271950 (ISBN 978-1-78976-172-6), Film Nation is essential reading for cinephiles. Inclusion of a substantive index makes the work highly attractive for classroom adoption in the field of cinema studies.

Cahiers du Cinema: Interviews with Film Directors, 19531970 brings together eighteen directorsOtto Preminger, Roberto Rossellini, John Ford, Howard Hawks, Max Ophuls, Nicholas Ray, Orson Welles, Fritz Lang, Alain Resnais, Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut, Michelangelo Antonioni, Carl-Theodor Dreyer, Federico Fellini, Robert Bresson, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Jean Renoir, and Eric Rohmer -- who are among the leading auteurs in the history of the cinema. The interviews were all commissioned for the legendary movie journal Cahiers du Cinema (the oldest such French-language magazine in continuous publication), the first critical enterprise to treat films, particularly Hollywood films, as a serious art form. Co-founded in 1951 by Andre Bazin, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze, and Joseph-Marie Lo Duca, Cahiers was edited, after 1957, by Rohmer himself, including among its writers (and interviewers) Jacques Rivette, Godard, Claude Chabrol, and Truffaut -- all of whom went on to become highly influential filmmakers. Conducted in Cahiers famously in-depth, critical and engaged style, the interviews in this volume catch each director at a crucial juncture in his development as an artist, and stand as a historical record of the dominance of the Euro-American tradition in cinematic art. This is the first such collection of its kind in English, edited with a contextualizing introduction, critical biographies, career filmographies, and a comprehensive index by the American scholar James R. Russo.