{"id":200,"date":"2013-02-27T13:21:36","date_gmt":"2013-02-27T13:21:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dvdchoices.co.uk\/?p=200"},"modified":"2013-02-27T13:21:36","modified_gmt":"2013-02-27T13:21:36","slug":"battle-for-the-bs-and-glenn-ford-a-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dvdchoices.co.uk\/?p=200","title":{"rendered":"Battle for the Bs and Glenn Ford: A Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

THE BATTLE FOR THE BS \u00a0Blair Davis\/Rutgers University Press<\/strong>\u00a0 Subtitled \u20181950s Hollywood and the Rebirth of Low-budget Cinema\u2019, The Battle for the Bs is a lively and accessible study of an oft-despised branch of US cinema — despised, that is, by those with a more rarefied view of film as an art form. But Davis, like so many of us, loves the exploitation, horror and science fiction films of this vanished era and gives an account full of arcane (and fun) interest. His speciality is the kind of forensic attention that is customarily granted to more prestige product, and Davis is having no truck with the notion that such films are marginal in any overall picture of American cinema. He rescues many a neglected gem from the shadows with a beguiling combination of scholarship and enthusiasm.<\/p>\n

GLENN FORD: A LIFE\u00a0 Peter Ford\/University of Wisconsin Film Studies<\/strong>\u00a0 Given that this is virtually an authorised biography by the late actor\u2019s son (who, in fact, appeared with his father in eight films), one might not expect a piece of warts-and-all biography — but Ford fils proves to be too good a writer to simply present us with a varnished and uncritical biography of his father. This is both an intelligent analysis of an underrated actor\u2019s highly impressive career (and Glenn Ford, remember, was able to work with some of the best directors in the business, notably Fritz Lang in his film noir classic The Big Heat), while not drawing a discreet veil over the actor\u2019s lengthy series of infidelities and sad career fadeout. Ford was never a showy actor and customarily presented in his films a picture of quiet, resilient intensity \u2013 and was, accordingly, often underrated, even though the work he did was some of the most subtle and truthful in the American cinema. With a career that encompasses such films as the Fritz Lang classic named above, Gilda, The Blackboard Jungle, 3:10 to Yuma and even Superman: The Movie (where his performance as Jonathan Kent contributed to one of the most moving sections of the film), Ford had nothing to be ashamed of, even though he was not the recipient of the kind of praise that came the way of more virtuosic actors, such as his contemporary Marlon Brando (with whom he held his own in The Teahouse of the August Moon). The filling in of personal detail by Peter Ford is handled in an effective fashion, and it’s good to see an unshowy but very solid film career commemorated in this fashion.<\/p>\n

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THE BATTLE FOR THE BS \u00a0Blair Davis\/Rutgers University Press\u00a0 Subtitled \u20181950s Hollywood and the Rebirth of Low-budget Cinema\u2019, The Battle for the Bs is a lively and accessible study of an oft-despised branch of US cinema — despised, that is, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dvdchoices.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dvdchoices.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dvdchoices.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dvdchoices.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dvdchoices.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.dvdchoices.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dvdchoices.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dvdchoices.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dvdchoices.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}