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1967 BOOK REVIEWS 219 THE FILM-MAKER'S ART~ by Haig P. Manoogian, Basic Books, Inc., New York, 1966, 340 pp. Price $7.50. The film art of the sixties appears to have entered a period of transition which may have a decisive effect on its subsequent history. Professor Manoogian in The Film-Makers Art recognizes that this marked alteration in the course of film making may be traced to the kinds of social and political changes, combined with technological, entrepreneuring, and artistic forces which are taking place in the wOrld-at-Iarge. When new directors refuse "to write" down to their audiences , when film uses symbol and suggestion rather than mere statement, when the cognitive-field theory is considered the approach to learning, The Film-Maker's Art meets a felt need for film teachers, for film students, for audiences who wish to formulate an intelligent criticism-for all who want to be more aware of what they "see" in a film. To the author, film making is a process of cognitive socialization , i.e., psychological significance of the dramatic image combined with a sensitive rendering of these images, and even by an 'abstraction' of such images. His thesis is that the director's human talents, which he would have equally balanced between thought and feeling, between intuition and sensation, must be deftly wedded, but not subordinate to, a high standard of intrinsic technical "know-how." His methodology for film-making is in conformity with the currently popular cognitive-field theory of learning which postulates that the ability to perceive relationships between image, symbol, concept, and reality is fundamental to the total patterns of the individual's intellectual, social, psychological, and cultural growth. The theme of the book, to assign a great level of societal responsibility to the film maker, gives the author's exceptionally fine explanation of intrinsic production problems of film making (technical "know-how" from script outline to final editing) a clearer sense of professional purpose. The student of cinematography et al will welcome this clear, concise, correct, and above all insightful, treatment of film methodology. Professor Manoogian challenges his readers to a high regard for training, discipline, and unflinching application of stringent artistic and intellectual standards in the film maker's art. The book gives the reader more perspective in film making than any book today because its author, in addition to expertise in methodology, is deeply perceptive of human relationships and society in the sixties which is characterized by the rapid extension of human possibilities, particularly by the expansion of opportunities for hitherto unrecognized social, economic , and professional classes. We are grateful to the author for his fine explanation of the technical "know-how" of film production and for his forceful challenge to capture the changing life of the sixties on film. MARY J. McKEE Notre Dame College OPEN LETTERS TO THE INTIMATE THEATER, by August Strindberg, translations and introductions by Walter Johnson, University of Washington Press, Seattle, 1966. Price $6.95. Wherever his haunted, peripatetic life took him, Strindberg wanted his own theater. He hoped for it and worked for it in Copenhagen, Berlin, London, and Paris; but it was in Stockholm, late in his life, that he finally found it, in an onthe -whole happy collaboration with the actor-director-producer August Falck. From 1907 to 1910 he saw 24 of his plays sensitively staged in 1147 performances. The idea of an intimate theater no doubt came from Max Reinhardt's Kleines 220 MODERN DRAMA September Theater and Kammerspiele, begun in 1902 and 1906 respectively; but Intima was Strindberg's in almost every sense of the word. Disenchantment and dissolution came when Falck suggested extending the repertoire to include Maeterlinck. Strindberg had come to like Maeterlinck by this time, but the old ego was still assertive in 1910, with death less than two years away. Thanks to Strindberg's withdrawal to the so-called Blue Tower of his later years, now a Strindberg museum, we have a substantial literature of memoranda to the theater, its director, and its company. Many of these are, in fact, discursive essays on acting, theater criticism, Shakespeare, the history play, and stylization in the drama. They were...

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