The 12-Hour Film Expert: Everything You Need to Know About Movies

Noah and James Charney. Rowman & Littlefield, $34 (248p) ISBN 978-1-5381-7342-8

In this slight primer, Noah Charney (The Thefts of the Mona Lisa), an art history professor at the American University of Rome, and his father James (Madness at the Movies), a psychiatry professor at Yale University, deliver by-the-numbers Hollywood history in a vague attempt to help readers watch movies “in a more thoughtful way.” The early chapters are the most successful, tracing the rise of the studio system and the technological and artistic advances that transformed movies from silent black-and-white novelty shorts to colorful popular art. For instance, the authors credit director Edwin Porter for helping establish the “grammar” of film in the early 20th century by opening scenes with establishing shots and progressively cutting to close-ups of the main subjects. Unfortunately, the bulk of the book is devoted to superficial overviews of the action, horror, noir, and western genres, among others. For instance, a chapter on musicals describes the professional partnership between Fred Astaire and Ginger Rodgers and the making of Singing in the Rain before embarking on a mind-numbing chronicle of major musicals that consists almost entirely of plot summary. The little commentary on offer is obvious and regurgitates common knowledge (rom-coms usually feature “meet cutes”; Star Wars had cutting-edge special effects). Readers can skip this. (June)