Description: Clarence Brown: Hollywood's Forgotten Master explores the forces that shaped a complex man--part-dreamer, part-pragmatist--who left an indelible mark on cinema.
Brief description: Gwenda Young is a professor of film history and lecturer in film studies at University College, Cork, Ireland. She is the author of numerous articles about film history, including three articles about Clarence Brown, and co-editor of two books of critical essays. In 2003, along with Kevin Brownlow, she curated a retrospective of Brown's films at the National Film Theatre, London.
Review Quotes:
This definitive study of the life and work of prolific MGM contract director Clarence Brown, whose career extended from the early silent era into the age of television, is exhaustively researched and skillfully written. It does not claim that Brown was a filmmaking genius, but rather a great visual stylist with an intense devotion to the artful logistics of production and direction who also had a poetic vision grounded in personal experience. It offers a vivid account of the industrial system in which he practiced, with special attention to the vexations of production code censorship and internal studio politics. Anyone who cares deeply about the history of American cinema should read this book.
--David A. Cook, author of A History of Narrative Film (Fifth Edition)