Watching Them Be

An intimate thought-provoking exploration of the mysteries of star presence in cinema‘One does not go to see them act'' wrote James Baldwin about the great iconic movie stars Wayne and Davis and Bogart ‘one goes to watch them be'' . . . Of course. It seems obvious . . . Where else besides the movies do you get to see other persons so intimately so pressingly so largely even? Where else such intense and close such sustained and searching looks as you have of these strangers on the screen whoever they really are? In life you try not to stare; but at the movies that''s exactly what you get to do two hours or more―safely raptly even blissfully.It''s this sort of amplified heightened sometimes transcendent seeing that James Harvey explores in Watching Them Be. Marvelously vivid and perceptive and impressively erudite this is his take on how aura is communicated in movies. Beginning where Roland Barthes left off with the face of Greta Garbo and ending with Robert Bresson''s Au hasard Balthazar Harvey moves nimbly and expertly through film history celebrating actors and directors who have particularly conveyed a feeling of transcendence. From Marlene Dietrich to John Wayne to Robert De Niro from Nashville to Jackie Brown to Masculine Feminine and the implicitly or explicitly religious films of Roberto Rossellini and Carl Theodor Dreyer this is one man''s personal deeply felt account of the films that have changed his life. They will also Harvey suggests change yours.