An Invention Without a Future

Book excerpt: Introduction: An invention without a future -- Part 1. Issues -- Authorship, auteurism, and cultural politics -- The reign of adaptation -- Notes on acting in cinema -- Imitation, eccentricity, and impersonation in movie acting -- The death and rebirth of rhetoric -- Part 2. Authors, actors, adaptations -- Hawks, Chandler, Bogart, Bacall: The big sleep -- Uptown folk: blackness and entertainment in Cabin in the sky -- Hitchcock and humor -- Hitchcock at the margins of noir -- Spies and lovers: North by Northwest -- Welles, Hollywood, and Heart of darkness -- Orson Welles and movie acting -- Welles and Kubrick: two forms of exile -- The treasure of the Sierra Madre -- The return of the dead -- Part 3. In defense of criticism -- James Agee -- Manny Farber -- Andrew Sarris -- Jonathan Rosenbaum -- Years as a critic: 2007-2010.