Author Spotlight

Gary Giddins

Gary Giddins is a critic and biographer who has written about jazz and film in such books as Visions of Jazz: The First Century; Weather Bird: Jazz at the Dawn of Its Second Century; Satchmo: The Genius of Louis Armstrong; Celebrating Bird: The Triumph of Charlie Parker; Jazz (with Scott DeVeaux); Natural Selection; Warning Shadows: Home Alone with Classic Cinema; and his two-volume biography of Bing Crosby, Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams—the Early Years, 1903–1940 and Bing Crosby: Swinging on a Star—the War Years, 1940–1946.

10 Results
Show Boat: Rollin’ on the River

A landmark stage musical receives its greatest cinematic treatment in this beautifully mounted saga that reflects the changing state of race relations across three generations.

By Gary Giddins

Essays— Mar 31, 2020
The Devil Is in the Details

During a period when studios gave him carte blanche, Josef von Sternberg created a sublime cinematic language that shrugged off one orthodoxy after another.

By Gary Giddins

Essays— Jun 24, 2018
The Honeymoon Killers: Broken Promises
Rarely has schizophrenia been closer to the surface of American cinema than in the transitional period of 1968–71. Hollywood had just abandoned its censorship code after nearly thirty-five years, and the behemoth studios were heaving and rattling i…

By Gary Giddins

Essays— Sep 28, 2015
La dolce vita: Tuxedos at Dawn

Federico Fellini’s frantic tragicomedy is such a classic it risks being underestimated.

By Gary Giddins

Essays— Oct 21, 2014
City Lights: The Immortal Tramp

A boldly silent film in the talkie era, Charlie Chaplin’s masterpiece has a grace that has never been equaled.

By Gary Giddins

Essays— Nov 11, 2013
Shadows: Eternal Times Square
As a film star, John Cassavetes embodied the kinetic, wild-eyed, insanely grinning villain. He seemed born to the role, with his volatile energy and dynamic outbursts, luminous yet curiously deadened eyes, wide-gaping mouth (David Thomson has likened…

By Gary Giddins

Essays— Oct 21, 2013
Sweet Smell of Success: The Fantastic Falco
It wasn’t intended. No one could have predicted it. But Sweet Smell of Success turned out to be a terminus where several movie genres and subgenres converged and curdled, producing a uniquely delicious perfume of everlasting cynicism. Inhale deep…

By Gary Giddins

Essays— Feb 22, 2011
Loving Lola
You can’t keep a good woman, or a great movie about a good woman, down. By all accounts, goodness in the real Lola Montez reflected the vagaries of character, not talent. She was, as Cosmo Brown says of Lina Lamont in Singin’ in the Rain, a tripl…

By Gary Giddins

Essays— Feb 10, 2010
The Seventh Seal: There Go the Clowns

In recent years, The Seventh Seal has often been honored more for its historical stature than its prevailing vitality. Those who attended its first international rollout and were changed forever by the experience are now second-guessing their attachm

…

By Gary Giddins

Essays— Jun 15, 2009
Still Curious
When Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint appeared in 1969, sending the intelligentsia into exegetical panic over masturbation and self-loathing, Roth remarked that his book was at present an event, but in time would be a novel. It did not take long…

By Gary Giddins

Mar 11, 2003