Totally, Tenderly, Tragically

Essays and Criticism from a Lifelong Love Affair with the Movies

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Paperback
$16.95 US
On sale Oct 20, 1998 | 400 Pages | 978-0-385-49250-8
This new collection by master essayist Phillip Lopate is ideal for courses in criticism and the essay, and as a reader for expository writing courses centered around a particular theme. The theme is movies, and over the past 25 years, tackling subjects ranging from Visconti to Jerry Lewis, from the first New York Film Festival to the 32nd, Lopate has made film his most cherished and dazzling subject. Totally, Tenderly, Tragically collects—for the first time—the very best of these essays.
Introduction

MEMORIES

Anticipation of La Notte: The “Heroic” Age of Moviegoing
The First New York Film Festival—1963
Three on a Couch: Jerry Lewis Adjusts
Contempt: The Story of a Marriage
Antonioni’s Cronaca
Diary of a Country Priest
: Films as Spiritual Life
Fassbinder’s Despair


FILMS AND FILMMAKERS

The Operatic Realism of Luchino Visconti
The World According to Makavejev
Fourteen Koans by a Levite on Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ
Truffaut’s The Woman Next Door
David Lynch’s Wild at Heart
Kenji Mizoguchi
The Legacy of John Cassavetes
A Taste for Naruse
Sidney Lumet, or The Necessity for Compromise
The Experimental Films of Warren Sonbert
Three Ozu Films from the Fifties

CAN MOVIES THINK?

The Passion of Pauline Kael
The Gallant Andrew Sarris
The Last Taboo: The Dumbing Down of American Movies
In Search of the Centaur: The Essay-Film
When Writers Direct
The Images of Children in Film
The 32nd New York Film Festival
Interview with Abbas Kiarostami
Was It a Montage for You, Too, My Dear?

Index
© Barbara Mensch
PHILLIP LOPATE is the author of the essay collections Against Joie de VivreBachelorhood, and Portrait of My Body. He has also written the novels The Rug Merchant and Confessions of a Summer. Lopate is the editor of The Art of the Personal Essay and the Library of America's Writing New York, as well as the series editor of The Art of the Essay. His film criticism appears regularly in The New York Times and other publications. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Phillip Lopate's The Glorious American Essay was published by Pantheon Books in November 2020. View titles by Phillip Lopate

About

This new collection by master essayist Phillip Lopate is ideal for courses in criticism and the essay, and as a reader for expository writing courses centered around a particular theme. The theme is movies, and over the past 25 years, tackling subjects ranging from Visconti to Jerry Lewis, from the first New York Film Festival to the 32nd, Lopate has made film his most cherished and dazzling subject. Totally, Tenderly, Tragically collects—for the first time—the very best of these essays.

Table of Contents

Introduction

MEMORIES

Anticipation of La Notte: The “Heroic” Age of Moviegoing
The First New York Film Festival—1963
Three on a Couch: Jerry Lewis Adjusts
Contempt: The Story of a Marriage
Antonioni’s Cronaca
Diary of a Country Priest
: Films as Spiritual Life
Fassbinder’s Despair


FILMS AND FILMMAKERS

The Operatic Realism of Luchino Visconti
The World According to Makavejev
Fourteen Koans by a Levite on Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ
Truffaut’s The Woman Next Door
David Lynch’s Wild at Heart
Kenji Mizoguchi
The Legacy of John Cassavetes
A Taste for Naruse
Sidney Lumet, or The Necessity for Compromise
The Experimental Films of Warren Sonbert
Three Ozu Films from the Fifties

CAN MOVIES THINK?

The Passion of Pauline Kael
The Gallant Andrew Sarris
The Last Taboo: The Dumbing Down of American Movies
In Search of the Centaur: The Essay-Film
When Writers Direct
The Images of Children in Film
The 32nd New York Film Festival
Interview with Abbas Kiarostami
Was It a Montage for You, Too, My Dear?

Index

Author

© Barbara Mensch
PHILLIP LOPATE is the author of the essay collections Against Joie de VivreBachelorhood, and Portrait of My Body. He has also written the novels The Rug Merchant and Confessions of a Summer. Lopate is the editor of The Art of the Personal Essay and the Library of America's Writing New York, as well as the series editor of The Art of the Essay. His film criticism appears regularly in The New York Times and other publications. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Phillip Lopate's The Glorious American Essay was published by Pantheon Books in November 2020. View titles by Phillip Lopate