Sign up for the Film Comment Letter today to get original film writing delivered to your inbox every week! >>

May-June 1992

An appreciation of James Agee, dying in film, Forster adaptations through the ages, Robert Altman’s The Player, arthouse cinemas, Jim Jarmusch’s Guilty Pleasures, Lee Tracy and Victor Fleming’s Bombshell, Hammer Horror, Steven Spielberg: a career analysis

Support FC Purchase

Issue Details

LIFE WITH VIDEO
A “new” Hitchcock surfaces, by Bill Desowitz
Camcorders go Hollywood, by George Mannes

THE PASSION OF JAMES AGEE
By Stephan Talty
America’s most eloquent film critic took writing and movies seriously. Too bad that, 50 years later, he’s out of print in his own country

TRADITIONS OF QUALITY
By Donald Lyons
Merchant-Ivory (nobody ever says Ivory Merchant) have been doing Forster again, but the history of filming classics predates them

“THE MOVIE YOU SAW IS THE MOVIE WE’RE GOING TO MAKE”
Robert Altman interviewed by Gavin Smith and Richard T. Jameson, with an introduction by the latter
Everybody’s talking about The Player, including Robert Altman

DAYS AND NIGHTS IN THE ARTHOUSE
By Richard Schickel
Remember Satyajit Ray, and the time when we could see his movies?

GUILTY PLEASURES
By Jim Jarmusch
The Sons of Lee Marvin, the nudity of Brigitte Bardot, and Lash LaRue’s 16-foot whip

ANOTHER TRACY
By Donald Phelps
Lee Tracy was the original Hildy Johnson on Boradway, and never stopped talking—fast

HARLOW’S TIME BOMB
By William Johnson
Bombshell reappraised

THE HOUSE OF HAMMER
By Andrew Mangravite
Were England’s famed purveyors of horror too gentlemanly to believe in their work?
Plus: a Hammer Who’s Who by Robert C. Cumbow

THE PANNING OF STEVEN SPIELBERG
By Henry Sheehan
How so many people have been wrong—pro and con—about Hollywood’s most successful filmmaker, and why. Part one of a career analysis

TIME ZONES
By Armond White
Updating the Alain Tanner file

STARTING FIRE WITH GUNPOWDER
By Elizabeth Weatherford
From the Arctic to the desert Southwest, Native American media is staking out territory

BERLIN DIARIES
By Harlan Kennedy and Amos Vogel
Two reports from the latest festival

A DEATH IN THE FAMILY
By Kate Buford
When the legends die

A LIFE OF HIS OWN
By Donald Lyons
McGilligan’s Cukor reviewed

POSSESSION
By David Shawn Klein
Music from Movies