Compelling biography of the colossus of soundtrack music: from Citizen Kane to Taxi Driver with The Day the Earth Stood Still, Psycho, Vertigo, and It’s Alive in between. A Heart at Fire’s Center emphasizes how Herrmann, an artistically ambitious romantic in a field originally filled with mediocrities, was able to master the use of music to give cinema its power over the psyche.
In addition to bringing his tempestuous life into focus, the author does a comprehensive score-by-score analysis of each soundtrack including illuminating interviews with directors with whom Herrmann worked with such as Scorsese and DePalma. Ends with a fascinating transcription of a talk by Herrmann analyzing the use of music in drama dating back to ancient Greek theater and discussing the first original film score (The Brothers Karamazov, 1931). SS

Publisher: University of California
Hardback: 415 pages
Illustrated

An extensively researched look at the lost era of silent movies dealing with the seamier side of life (abortion, drugs, bootlegging, red-light districts, opium dens, political corruption, poverty, venereal disease) and political issues such as labor unrest, women’s suffrage and the Russian Revolution. Beautifully illustrated with stills from films like Human Wreckage, The Devil’s Needle, City Gone Wild, The Godless Girl (a women-in-prison flick directed by Cecil B. DeMille) and The Cocaine Traffic, many of which no longer exist in any form due to neglect. SS

Publisher: University of California
Paperback: 606 pages
Illustrated

In 1990, the British Museum in London mounted an exhibition consisting entirely of fakes. It gathered together paintings, sculptures, reliefs, ceramics, prints, manuscripts and other artistic and historical artifacts all of which had been initially validated as authentic but which were eventually found to be fraudulent, the products of skilled artists and artisans whose main objective was to fool the experts. It was a visionary show, to say the least, and courageous in that it questioned the authority and the expertise of museums themselves. This book is the catalog of that important show.
Study closely the Cottingley Fairy Photographs believed to be actual images of those elusive beings. Gaze with wonder upon the fur-covered trout, previously owned by the Royal Scottish Museum and at one time believed to be an actual specimen brought back from the wilds of Canada. See the supposedly ancient marble head of Julius Caesar, revealed to have been artificially weathered—perhaps by pounding it with a nail-studded piece of wood. All of these marvels and more are to be found in this remarkable book, at once an investigation of the limits of expertise, a chronicle of the varieties of human gullibility, and an illustrated catalog from a fascinating art show. AS

Publisher: University of California
Paperback: 312 pages
Illustrated

In 1936, the French newspaper Paris-Soir sent the popular poet and novelist Blaise Cendrars to write on Hollywood. He stayed at the then ultraluxurious Roosevelt Hotel and thrilled his countrymen with each canny report. These articles were reworked and gathered together that same year, but have only now been translated into English. In them Cendrars explores Hollywood in its golden years, presenting a fun series of journalistic encounters on the streets of Tinseltown. His attempts to interview the powerful studio heads were often thwarted by Cerberus-like studio guards, but Cendrars still managed to cover a lot of territory. And much of what he uncovered still applies today, as is made evident by his chapter titles: “In Hollywood anyone who walks around on foot is a suspect” and “If you want to make movies, come to Hollywood, but unless you pay the price, you won’t succeed!” CS

Publisher: University of California
Hardback: 256 pages
Illustrated

Ray was raised among a hybrid of influences ranging from orthodox Hinduism and the genius of Rabindranath Tagore to Hollywood films and Western classical music. In over 30 films, Ray experimented extensively with mood, period and milieu, conveying through his films a sense of whole personality in the manner of great writers or painters. His works “offer us intimations, if we tune ourselves to him, of a mysterious unity behind the visible world.” Written several years before his death, this book contains a number of interviews with Ray and firsthand observations by the author on the sets of two of Ray’s films. Replete with 150 photographs from his life and films plus sketches from his shooting notebooks, his early advertising work and his memoirs. JAT

Publisher: University of California
Paperback: 430 pages
Illustrated

In 1916, Ball founded the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich. It was the performance, exhibition space and headquarters, so to speak, for the Dadaists and their “new tendency in art.” Ball kept records of their early performances and exhibits, documenting the movement’s progress as it unfolded day by day. with conventional language, focusing on sounds not words, creating sound poems. Ball’s involvement with sound poetry (a form of poetry which dispenses with conventional language, focusing on sounds, not words) and the gesamtkunstwerk (total art work) left its mark in Dada circles. Despite gaining an international reputation, Ball remained mysterious, and his Dada Manifesto was rarely studied since it appeared only in fragments and was never printed in its entirety or translated into English until 1974 (this book is a revision of that edition). Fellow Dadaist Hans Arp noted that “in this book stand the most significant words that have thus far been written about Dada… [Ball] forces current attitudes in art and politics to ever more extreme conclusions, only to discover that his method always eludes him. Finally he outruns himself and flees from time itself.” DW

Publisher: University of California
Paperback: 324 pages
Illustrated

According to the author, “Dada is the only appropriate philosophy for our age.” Huelsenbeck focuses on the Dada movement’s beginning as absurd farce and radical political stance and evolution into as a tool for the development of mankind. In 1936, Huelsenbeck moved to New York, changed his name, started a private psychiatric practice and severed all ties with the art world. From 1936 to 1945 he did not publish anything, then suddenly, from 1949 to 1974, published a series of essays rethinking Dada, claiming he was in a “position to pass fair judgement on Dadaism.” Finally, after “leaving America for good,” he concluded that Dada could not exist in America (as did Duchamp). He also felt that he was unable to explain to America that “Dada was simply a revolt against technology, mass media and the feeling of being lost in an ocean of business cleverness.” “Liberty never existed anywhere,” he wrote, “but America’s attempt (although it has failed) was one of the most sincere attempts.” Longing to get the chaos of Dada back in his life and to be a “Dada hippie” again, he moved back to Europe and died, in 1974. DW

Publisher: University of California
Paperback: 202 pages

Pursues the issue of ideological appropriation of Nietzsche by the Nazis, the avant-garde, socialists of the Right and Left, and thinkers like Heidegger, Jung, Mann, Rosenberg, Derrida, and others. A good introduction to, and analysis of, some of Nietzsche’s most meaningful thoughts: his critique of enlightenment, rationality, philosophical humanism, middle-class values, Christianity and its slave morality, and academia; and his emphasis on life, will to power, and cultural totality. Provides valuable insights into how these thoughts became national policy in the Third Reich, and the ideological foundation for some of the 20th century’s greatest thinkers: “Man is Beast and Overbeast: the higher man is Nonman and Overman: these belong together. With every growth of man in greatness and height, there is also a growth in depth and terribleness: one should not will the one without the other—or rather: the more radically we will the one, the more radically we achieve precisely the other.”—Heidegger. BS

Publisher: University of California
Hardback: 368 pages
Illustrated