Some error occured while loading the Quick View. Please close the Quick View and try reloading the page.
Acclaimed by the Los Angeles Review of Books as “the most detailed year-by-year look at Hollywood during the first decade of the Cold War ever published, one that takes film analysis beyond the screen and sets it in its larger political context,” An Army of Phantoms is a “delightful” and “amazing” (Dissent) work of film history and cultural criticism by J. Hoberman, one of the foremost film critics writing today, addressing the dynamic synergy of American politics and American popular culture.
By “tell[ing] the story not just of what's on the screen but what played out behind it” (The American Scholar), Hoberman orchestrates a colorful, sometimes surreal pageant wherein Cecil B. DeMille rubs shoulders with Douglas MacArthur, atomic tests are shown on live TV, God talks on the radio, and Joe McCarthy is bracketed with Marilyn Monroe. From cavalry Westerns, apocalyptic sci-fi flicks, and biblical spectaculars, movies to media events, congressional hearings and political campaigns, An Army of Phantoms “remind[s] you what criticism is supposed to be: revelatory, reflective and as rapturous as the artwork itself” (Time Out New York).
By “tell[ing] the story not just of what's on the screen but what played out behind it” (The American Scholar), Hoberman orchestrates a colorful, sometimes surreal pageant wherein Cecil B. DeMille rubs shoulders with Douglas MacArthur, atomic tests are shown on live TV, God talks on the radio, and Joe McCarthy is bracketed with Marilyn Monroe. From cavalry Westerns, apocalyptic sci-fi flicks, and biblical spectaculars, movies to media events, congressional hearings and political campaigns, An Army of Phantoms “remind[s] you what criticism is supposed to be: revelatory, reflective and as rapturous as the artwork itself” (Time Out New York).
Price: $22.99
Pages: 408
Publisher: The New Press
Imprint: The New Press
Publication Date:
04 September 2012
Trim Size: 8.25 X 5.50 in
ISBN: 9781595588333
Format: Paperback
“Utterly compulsive reading … There's something majestic about the reach of Hoberman's ambitions … An Army of Phantoms may prove to be the definitive text on its subject.”
—Film Comment
“An energetic and adventurous book … scholarly, even encyclopedic, yet written occasionally in a style akin to the Hush-Hush columns of L.A. Confidential.”
—London Review of Books
“A welcome acknowledgment of how complicated the story of one particular period really is.”
—National Review
“An epic: an alternately fevered and measured account of what might be called the primal scene of American cinema.”
—Cineaste
“An important, overflowing and often compelling study of movie history … Smartly conceived, and its richness defies capture in a book review.”
—Ha'aretz
—Film Comment
“An energetic and adventurous book … scholarly, even encyclopedic, yet written occasionally in a style akin to the Hush-Hush columns of L.A. Confidential.”
—London Review of Books
“A welcome acknowledgment of how complicated the story of one particular period really is.”
—National Review
“An epic: an alternately fevered and measured account of what might be called the primal scene of American cinema.”
—Cineaste
“An important, overflowing and often compelling study of movie history … Smartly conceived, and its richness defies capture in a book review.”
—Ha'aretz
J. Hoberman is the author, co-author, or editor of a dozen books, including The Dream Life: Movies, Media, and the Mythology of the Sixties (The New Press) and Film After Film (Or, What Became of 21st Century Cinema?). He has written for Artforum, Bookforum, the London Review ofBooks, The Nation, the New York Review of Books, and the New York Times; has taught cinema history at Cooper Union since 1990; and was, for over thirty years, a film critic for the Village Voice. He lives in New York.
Acknowledgments
Introduction: From God's Mouth to Your Ear
Prologue: Mission for Hollywood—Stalingrad to V-J Day
I. Aliens Among Us: Hollywood, 1946–47
MGM's Manhattan Project: The Beginning or the End?
When HUAC Came to Hollywood …
Showtime (“Hooray for Robert Taylor!”)
Decision at the Waldorf: The Big Mop-up
II. Fighting for the Ministry of Truth, Justice, and the American Way, 1948–50
The Iron Curtain Parts and the Campaign Begins
Fort Apache, Our Home
Hollywood Alert: From Red Menace to Storm Warning
“The Saucers Are Real!” (And Guilty of Treason)
Sunset/Panic/In a Lonely Place
Countdown
III. Redskin Menace from Outer Space: America at War, 1950–52
Across Rio Grande … into Manchuria?
This Is Korea?
The Communist Was a Thing for the FBI!
Three Cases: Joseph L., Carl F., and Elia Kazan
Campaign '52: Take Us to Our Leader, Big Jim
High Noon in the Universe
IV. The PaxAmericanArama: Eisenhower Power, 1953–55
“No One on This Earth Can Help You”: Above and Beyond and Fantasies of Invasion
The Hammer, the Witch Trials, and Pickup on South Street
After Quo Vadis: Onward Christian Soldier, Watch Out for The Wild One
Marilyn Ascends, Joe Goes Down
Sh-Boom Them! (DeMillennium Approaching …)
V. Searchin': America on the Road, 1955–56
Coonskin Kids, or the Martians Have Landed
On the Brink of the Wild Frontier: Kiss Me Deadly, Rebel Without a Cause
Better Red Than Dead: Body-Snatched Prisoners of Comanche Mind Control
“That'll Be the Day!” The Spirit of '56
Epilogue: The Face of the Crowd
Sources
Index
Introduction: From God's Mouth to Your Ear
Prologue: Mission for Hollywood—Stalingrad to V-J Day
I. Aliens Among Us: Hollywood, 1946–47
MGM's Manhattan Project: The Beginning or the End?
When HUAC Came to Hollywood …
Showtime (“Hooray for Robert Taylor!”)
Decision at the Waldorf: The Big Mop-up
II. Fighting for the Ministry of Truth, Justice, and the American Way, 1948–50
The Iron Curtain Parts and the Campaign Begins
Fort Apache, Our Home
Hollywood Alert: From Red Menace to Storm Warning
“The Saucers Are Real!” (And Guilty of Treason)
Sunset/Panic/In a Lonely Place
Countdown
III. Redskin Menace from Outer Space: America at War, 1950–52
Across Rio Grande … into Manchuria?
This Is Korea?
The Communist Was a Thing for the FBI!
Three Cases: Joseph L., Carl F., and Elia Kazan
Campaign '52: Take Us to Our Leader, Big Jim
High Noon in the Universe
IV. The PaxAmericanArama: Eisenhower Power, 1953–55
“No One on This Earth Can Help You”: Above and Beyond and Fantasies of Invasion
The Hammer, the Witch Trials, and Pickup on South Street
After Quo Vadis: Onward Christian Soldier, Watch Out for The Wild One
Marilyn Ascends, Joe Goes Down
Sh-Boom Them! (DeMillennium Approaching …)
V. Searchin': America on the Road, 1955–56
Coonskin Kids, or the Martians Have Landed
On the Brink of the Wild Frontier: Kiss Me Deadly, Rebel Without a Cause
Better Red Than Dead: Body-Snatched Prisoners of Comanche Mind Control
“That'll Be the Day!” The Spirit of '56
Epilogue: The Face of the Crowd
Sources
Index