News Too
Boomer Times Review of The Foreign Film In America Book
Boomer Times & Senior Life
Book of the Month
“Bergman, Fellini, Kurosawa:
The Foreign Film In America
Author: James N. Selvidge —
Reviewed by Anita Finley
What a totally engrossing book! If you like foreign films as I do, you will jump into this assortment of foreign films that you may remember, or not have even heard of, no less seen, but that won’t matter. The author, James N. Selvidge, does an outstanding job of categorizing them, explaining many of the nuances about the films and sharing his great passion and knowledge of this historical film industry.
We can start at the beginning and that would be to tell you that James Selvidge is one of the last survivors intimate with the history of the foreign film in America circa early 1950s through early 1970s. As the former owner and operator of the Ridgemont Theatre in Seattle, Washington, he shares his experiences as a young man who acquired and opened this “foreign film theatre” and thereby pioneering the foreign film market in Seattle. He brings to light the little-known side of those early days: hypocrisy, corruption, censorship, greed, violence, and ultimately a battle fought in the Supreme Court itself. I especially enjoyed the second part of the book where Selvidge provides a synopsis and personal review of 330 of the top foreign films of that era. There are full-color illustrations of each movie’s original posters which bring back many memories to me (“Never on Sunday,” “Zorba the Greek,” and even a documentary “The Eleanor Roosevelt Story” by Archibald MacLeish which won an Academy Award for the Best Documentary). This section constitutes a unique and invaluable reference tool.
There were many testimonials as to the importance of Selvidge and his historical excellence, but I would like to share one that probably says it all: In the age of Netflix, when just about any film made anywhere can be summoned painlessly to your mailbox, we do well to remember that once upon a time there were only a handful of independently operated movie theaters in the United Sates dedicated to showing foreign-language cinema. Prints were few, sane distributors fewer, and even as the beleaguered exhibitors struggled to build an audience for “movies you had to read,” often as not they had to fight off local censor boards, right wing xenophobes, and self-appointed arbiters of morality and decency. Jim Selvidge was one of these cultural heroes. Single handily at times he championed Bergman, Godard, Bunel, Kurosawa, et al., put the Seattle Censor Board out of business, founded the Seattle Film Society and enticed his community to take the first steps toward acquiring a reputation as one of the savviest movie towns in the country. “It’s an important story”.
—Richard T. Jameson (Movietone News 1971-81).