Bookshelf

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 729, 3 July 1953, Page 17

Bookshelf

PICTURE, by Lillian Ross; Victor Gollancz, Ltd., London. English price, 16/-. HERE have been many books on the technical problems and processes of | film production, and from time to time producers,: directors, or players have published their own personal narratives about, the making of this film-or that, but Miss."Ross is-so far as I know--the first outsider to attempt an exhaustive _script-to-screen study of one production and the people concerned in ‘it, I cannot quite agree with the publisher when. he claims that "‘this is factual reportage of real brilliance by a mistress of that difficult craft." ‘Picture is certainly brilliant-no film enthusigst should pass it by and no one interested in Life in» Hollywood could fail to find it absorbing-but there is more to it than factual reporting as the term is still understood in the more ative enclaves of British journalism. Miss Ross tells the story. of The Red Badge of Cournas---Sieptep Crane’s Civil War classic directed for M.G.M. by John Huston, ther ly remade by the studio to give it box e appeal-and it i¢ obvious that her sympathies have been committed, from the. outset. Since she gave her time completes this one assignment, attending erences in New "York, talking with studio people of all kinds in Hollywood, going on location ae x he unit, even attending sneak previews, i perhaps impossible for her not to get emotionally involved. You can find opinion sandwiched in between the lines on any one of the 240 pages. But she doesn’t openly ‘express an opinion anywhere. It is good writing, sensitive writing by a woman of liberal and enlightened mind, but it is not. factual or objective reporting. On the whole, however, it is convincing. One may not altogether agree with the book’s implicit conclusion--that Huston’s work was ruined in an unsuccessful attempt to catch the teenagers at the box-office-but the character studies are strong and consistent and the general picture of Hollywood and its neuroses is devastating. In that atmosphere of sycophancy, suspicion, and perennial hypertension it is not surprising that few good films are made. It is amazing that films are made at all.