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Film Writing and Selected Journalism
James Agee brought to bear all his moral energy, slashing wit, and boundless curiosity in the criticism and journalism that established him as one of the commanding literary voices of America at mid-century. In 1944 W. H. Auden called Agee's film reviews for The Nation "the most remarkable regular event in American journalism today." Those columns, along with much of the movie criticism that Agee wrote for Time through most of the 1940s, were collected posthumously in Agee on Film: Reviews and Comments, undoubtedly the most influential writings on film by an American.
Whether reviewing a Judy Garland musical or a wartime documentary, assessing the impact of Italian neorealism or railing against the compromises in a Hollywood adaptation of Hemingway, Agee always wrote of movies as a pervasive, profoundly significant part of modern life, a new art whose classics (Chaplin, Dovzhenko, Vigo) he revered and whose betrayal in the interests of commerce or propaganda he often deplored. If his frequent disappointments could be registered in acid tones, his enthusiasms were expressed with passionate eloquence. This Library of America volume supplements the classic pieces from Agee on Film with previously uncollected writings on Ingrid Bergman, the Marx Brothers, Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat, Vittorio De Sica's Shoeshine, and a wealth of other cinematic subjects.
Agee's own work as a screenwriter is represented by his script for Charles Laughton's unique and haunting masterpiece of Southern gothic, The Night of the Hunter, adapted from the novel by Davis Grubb. This collection also includes examples of Agee's masterfully probing reporting for Fortune � on subjects as diverse as the Tennessee Valley Authority, commercial orchids, and cockfighting � and a sampling of his literary reviews, among them appreciations of William Faulkner, Virginia Woolf, S. J. Perelman, and William Carlos Williams.
Whether reviewing a Judy Garland musical or a wartime documentary, assessing the impact of Italian neorealism or railing against the compromises in a Hollywood adaptation of Hemingway, Agee always wrote of movies as a pervasive, profoundly significant part of modern life, a new art whose classics (Chaplin, Dovzhenko, Vigo) he revered and whose betrayal in the interests of commerce or propaganda he often deplored. If his frequent disappointments could be registered in acid tones, his enthusiasms were expressed with passionate eloquence. This Library of America volume supplements the classic pieces from Agee on Film with previously uncollected writings on Ingrid Bergman, the Marx Brothers, Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat, Vittorio De Sica's Shoeshine, and a wealth of other cinematic subjects.
Agee's own work as a screenwriter is represented by his script for Charles Laughton's unique and haunting masterpiece of Southern gothic, The Night of the Hunter, adapted from the novel by Davis Grubb. This collection also includes examples of Agee's masterfully probing reporting for Fortune � on subjects as diverse as the Tennessee Valley Authority, commercial orchids, and cockfighting � and a sampling of his literary reviews, among them appreciations of William Faulkner, Virginia Woolf, S. J. Perelman, and William Carlos Williams.
748 pages, Hardcover
First published September 22, 2005
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307 people want to read
About the author
James Agee
80Ìýbooks278ÌýfollowersNoted American writer and critic James Rufus Agee collaborated with photographer Walker Evans on
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
(1941), a bleak depiction of rural poverty and posthumously published his novel
A Death in the Family
(1957).
This author, journalist, poet, screenwriter in the 1940s most influenced films in the United States. His autobiographical work won a Pulitzer Prize.
Life
Born at Highland Avenue and 15th Street (renamed James Agee Street in 1999) to Hugh James Agee and Laura Whitman Tyler. When Agee was six years of age in 1915, his father died in an automobile accident. From the age of seven, he and his younger sister, Emma, were educated in boarding schools. The most influential of these was located near his mother's summer cottage two miles from Sewanee, Tennessee. Saint Andrews School for Mountain Boys was run by Episcopal monks affiliated with the Order of the Holy Cross, and it was there that Agee's lifelong friendship with an Episcopal priest, Father James Harold Flye, began in 1919. As Agee's close friend and spiritual confidant, Flye was the recipient of many of Agee's most revealing letters.
Agee went to Knoxville High School for the 1924�1925 school year, then travelled with Father Flye to Europe. On their return, Agee moved to boarding school in New Hampshire, entering the class of 1928 at Phillips Exeter Academy. There, he was president of The Lantern Club and editor of the Monthly where his first short stories, plays, poetry and articles were published. Agee was admitted to Harvard University's class of 1932. He was editor-in-chief of the Harvard Advocate.
In 1951 in Santa Barbara, Agee, a hard drinker and chain-smoker, suffered the first two in a series of heart attacks, which ultimately claimed his life four years later at the age of 45. He was buried on a farm he owned at Hillsdale, New York.
Career
After graduation, he wrote for Fortune and Time magazines, although he is better known for his later film criticism in The Nation. In 1934, he published his only volume of poetry, Permit Me Voyage.
In the summer of 1936, Agee spent eight weeks on assignment for Fortune with photographer Walker Evans living among sharecroppers in Alabama. Agee turned the material into a book entitled, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941). It sold only 600 copies before being remaindered.
In 1942, Agee became the film critic for Time and, at one point, reviewed up to six films per week. Together, he and friend Whittaker Chambers ran "the back of the book" for Time. He left to become film critic for The Nation. In 1948, however, he quit both magazines to become a freelance writer. One of his assignments was a well-received article for Life Magazine about the great silent movie comedians, Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd and Harry Langdon, which has been credited for reviving Keaton's career. As a freelance in the 1950s, he continued to write magazine articles while working on movie scripts, often with photographer Helen Levitt.
Agee was an ardent champion of Charlie Chaplin's then extremely unpopular film Monsieur Verdoux (1947), which has since become a film classic. He was also a great admirer of Laurence Olivier's Henry V and Hamlet, especially Henry V, for which he actually published three separate reviews, all of which have been printed in the collection Agee on Film.
Legacy
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, ignored on its original publication in 1941, has been placed among the greatest literary works of the 20th Century by the New York School of Journalism and the New York Public Library.
This author, journalist, poet, screenwriter in the 1940s most influenced films in the United States. His autobiographical work won a Pulitzer Prize.
Life
Born at Highland Avenue and 15th Street (renamed James Agee Street in 1999) to Hugh James Agee and Laura Whitman Tyler. When Agee was six years of age in 1915, his father died in an automobile accident. From the age of seven, he and his younger sister, Emma, were educated in boarding schools. The most influential of these was located near his mother's summer cottage two miles from Sewanee, Tennessee. Saint Andrews School for Mountain Boys was run by Episcopal monks affiliated with the Order of the Holy Cross, and it was there that Agee's lifelong friendship with an Episcopal priest, Father James Harold Flye, began in 1919. As Agee's close friend and spiritual confidant, Flye was the recipient of many of Agee's most revealing letters.
Agee went to Knoxville High School for the 1924�1925 school year, then travelled with Father Flye to Europe. On their return, Agee moved to boarding school in New Hampshire, entering the class of 1928 at Phillips Exeter Academy. There, he was president of The Lantern Club and editor of the Monthly where his first short stories, plays, poetry and articles were published. Agee was admitted to Harvard University's class of 1932. He was editor-in-chief of the Harvard Advocate.
In 1951 in Santa Barbara, Agee, a hard drinker and chain-smoker, suffered the first two in a series of heart attacks, which ultimately claimed his life four years later at the age of 45. He was buried on a farm he owned at Hillsdale, New York.
Career
After graduation, he wrote for Fortune and Time magazines, although he is better known for his later film criticism in The Nation. In 1934, he published his only volume of poetry, Permit Me Voyage.
In the summer of 1936, Agee spent eight weeks on assignment for Fortune with photographer Walker Evans living among sharecroppers in Alabama. Agee turned the material into a book entitled, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941). It sold only 600 copies before being remaindered.
In 1942, Agee became the film critic for Time and, at one point, reviewed up to six films per week. Together, he and friend Whittaker Chambers ran "the back of the book" for Time. He left to become film critic for The Nation. In 1948, however, he quit both magazines to become a freelance writer. One of his assignments was a well-received article for Life Magazine about the great silent movie comedians, Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd and Harry Langdon, which has been credited for reviving Keaton's career. As a freelance in the 1950s, he continued to write magazine articles while working on movie scripts, often with photographer Helen Levitt.
Agee was an ardent champion of Charlie Chaplin's then extremely unpopular film Monsieur Verdoux (1947), which has since become a film classic. He was also a great admirer of Laurence Olivier's Henry V and Hamlet, especially Henry V, for which he actually published three separate reviews, all of which have been printed in the collection Agee on Film.
Legacy
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, ignored on its original publication in 1941, has been placed among the greatest literary works of the 20th Century by the New York School of Journalism and the New York Public Library.
Ratings & Reviews
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Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
May 27, 2008
Having read so much of this book elsewhere, my primary reason for buying it was at long last to be able to read the orchid article that I had heard Agee had written under protest and which was fabled to be as venomous as anything he'd ever written... but that's a fable. Everything else, including the oft-quoted TVA article that I'd never read in its entirety until I found it here, is great or at least very interesting. (Note the stuff on cock fighting: Southerners seem to have a peculiar lacuna right around the areas of cruelty and abuse.)
July 17, 2009
This man understood the language of film and its dialects of technique and narrative better than most film critics past and present. Idiosyncratic and preferential in his reviews (some films receive two-line reviews; others two+ columns), Agee's writings are a must for a film student or cineast(e). The only sour note is that it may be awhile before I can again enjoy some local film reviews.
December 3, 2007
Compatriot!
April 24, 2010
Fun to read, even if you don't care about the movies
Read
August 22, 2024Agee on Film - finished 08.21.24
April 30, 2009
Contains some great bits, but a lot of his criticism hasn't aged well. The essay on cockfighting is excellent, though.
July 2, 2012
A smart and funny read.
June 7, 2017
Probably didn’t need to pick this one up, but there is a lot of talk about Agee’s Time articles.. They were very well done, particularly the one on the TVA and the one on the atomic bomb. “With the controlled splitting of the atom, humanity, already profoundly perplexed and disunified, was brought inescapably into a new age in which all thoughts and things were split.�
The US Commercial Orchid was a good lay-man’s study of economics. The uncollected movie reviews were of the same tone and insight that dominate Agee on Film
And that’s it for me and Agee for a bit. I’m through the vast majority of his work and am ready for a change. Agee, though, is on my list of favorite writers. He wrote one of the most moving studies of poverty I’ve read. He was deeply religious and deeply skeptical, and his conflict resonated with me. He was clearly bright, sometimes formidable, and his vocabulary is one of the most extensive I’ve come across. He remained engaged with popular culture through his movie reviews, and ultimately channeled his literary skill into some very well-written movie scripts. His letters are a moving depiction of the human struggle we all go through to different degrees. Sadly, I don’t think he ever found what he spent his whole life looking for.
I’ve only had time to watch one more movie reviewed by Agee. Rome: Open City. This was a truly great film, and makes me take back everything I said about books and movies. This film is not bound by time or technology and is as alive with insight as it was the day it was made. It is the most Jesuit movie I have ever seen and I can’t recommend it enough. There is only one strident note in the whole film. It occurs when the bride-to-be, walking with the priest, asks why God set the pestilence of the Nazis on them. The priest gives the totally ludicrous answer that Italy may just deserve Nazi occupation for the sins of its citizens.
The US Commercial Orchid was a good lay-man’s study of economics. The uncollected movie reviews were of the same tone and insight that dominate Agee on Film
And that’s it for me and Agee for a bit. I’m through the vast majority of his work and am ready for a change. Agee, though, is on my list of favorite writers. He wrote one of the most moving studies of poverty I’ve read. He was deeply religious and deeply skeptical, and his conflict resonated with me. He was clearly bright, sometimes formidable, and his vocabulary is one of the most extensive I’ve come across. He remained engaged with popular culture through his movie reviews, and ultimately channeled his literary skill into some very well-written movie scripts. His letters are a moving depiction of the human struggle we all go through to different degrees. Sadly, I don’t think he ever found what he spent his whole life looking for.
I’ve only had time to watch one more movie reviewed by Agee. Rome: Open City. This was a truly great film, and makes me take back everything I said about books and movies. This film is not bound by time or technology and is as alive with insight as it was the day it was made. It is the most Jesuit movie I have ever seen and I can’t recommend it enough. There is only one strident note in the whole film. It occurs when the bride-to-be, walking with the priest, asks why God set the pestilence of the Nazis on them. The priest gives the totally ludicrous answer that Italy may just deserve Nazi occupation for the sins of its citizens.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
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