Seeing Is Believing: Or How Hollywood Taught Us to Stop Worrying and Love the '50s by Peter Biskind

Seeing Is Believing: Or How Hollywood Taught Us to Stop Worrying and Love the '50s Reviews

• 
  Robert

  In spite of what you might be led to believe by the cover image and typography, this is not of a piece with Biskind's books on Hollywood on- and off-screen from the '70s to the '90s. Rather it deals with the politics and semiotics of American film in the 1950s, the time of McCarthyism and Reds under the bed. I've only seen one of the films deconstructed (and that 15 years ago) but this was an interesting read nonetheless. Just don't make the same mistake I did in assuming it would be another gossipy exposé.
• 
  Jan

  Biskind's categorizations are helpful for giving a general understanding of Hollywood and film during the 1950s, but they're ultimately reductive. It seems to me that there are more nuances in these films, their tropes, and the ways in which they negotiate between censorship and acceptability. While he always does interesting analyses, the book is driving towards the same point at all turns; it comes off as repetitive and makes it feel like it is much longer than it actually needs to be.
• 
  Ben

  Biskind covers an incredible number of Hollywood movies herein, and gives the reader many of the best/worst/most incongruous lines from otherwise forgettable vehicles. Nice to have this book as a cheat sheet to help me avoid indulging my 50's Americana obsession via more crappy DVD reissues (besides, I've seen enough westerns and war movies for one lifetime).
  
  Biskind oversimplifies in categorizing "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" (yes, I know I should italicize that title, but I'm too lazy to do html)as right wing, given that in interviews the film's director Don Siegel denied that he was anti-communist. Siegel also directed "Dirty Harry" (NOTE TO IMAGINARY PERSONAL ASSISTANT: please italicize that title) and said that it was not a right-wing film, so maybe the director's in denial, but I prefer to think that "Body Snatchers," the finest of 50s paranoid sci-fi thrillers, is open to more than one simplistic interpretation.
  
  Biskind could have worked at a incorporating a few synonyms for some of his categories, especially "conservative," a word that in recent years has been repeated so many times as short hand for so many things it's virtually lost its meaning. Though it's standard in film writing it's also annoying that the director's name is "above the title" and screenwriters are rarely, if ever, mentioned as contributing to a film's vision. Gore Vidal wrote a brilliant evisceration of the auteur theory which should have put a rest to such nonsense. I don't have a link to it handy (NOTE TO STILL IMAGINARY ASSISTANT: find me that link).
  
  Those quibbles aside, Biskind's arguments are well developed for the most part, and his range of references outside of film history and criticism make this a very useful read. I found the stuff on corporate liberalism's emphasis on social control via therapeutic middle ground very sharp. His analysis of gender roles in 1950s Hollywood is also excellent.
• 
  Simone

  
  Read for class, liked quite a bit. The chapters were he focuses on individual films, especially if you have seen the individual films in question. Anyway, although his point doesn't address ideology, I found his reading of the films interesting.
• 
  Tom Stamper

  As a fan of 1950s movies and political analysis, I found Biskind's book to be a treasure trove if analysis and insight. It helps to have seen the movies in question. I was probably around 70%. I would like to watch the other 30% and read it again.
• 
  Wendeline Wright

  Very theoretical in comparison to Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, but still interesting for its look into mainstream 50s American cinema.
• 
  James barrett

  meh, not as insightful into the film making process as easy riders and raging bulls. more of a film analysis and not a very interesting one at that.
  
• 
  Fraser Sherman

  Biskind argues that 1950s films have a political subtext. Centrist films believe the system works and individualists need to get with the program, though they disagree on who should run the system (federal or local government? Scientists or ordinary guys?); radical films of the right and left glorify the rebel and the individual, though in different ways. The films also tell viewers how to think about women, sex, power, child-rearing and manhood.
  It's an interesting and thought-provoking analysis, though occasionally strained. Biskind argues that Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a right-wing anti communist film (short answer: no) but that's just a cover for an attack on American conformity. Similarly the giant ants in Them symbolize the Communists, but that's just a cover for an attack on American radicalism. That's not even remotely persuasive.
  That said, this has enough interesting thoughts I found it worth rereading.
• 
  Gareth

  A deep dive into the political subtexts of 1950s Hollywood, Seeing Is Believing should not be confused with Peter Biskind’s more celebrated and scurrilous behind-the-scenes books like Easy Riders, Raging Bulls. This is Biskind’s own analysis of dozens of films across multiple genres: how conservative, pluralist, centrist, left or right wing they are, what they say about gender roles, how they reflect the other films of the time. It’s heady and well-argued stuff, but slow going. Biskind has enough wit to keep it interesting and it definitely puts these films in a new light.
  
  NB: I’d rate it 3.5 if half stars were available.
• 
  James

  Biskind is a genius at describing fifties films as a consequence of fifties history and culture. He made me rewatch "High Noon" and love it and I'm starting on Sirk movies next. Though he doesn't get into a lot of analysis of the mise en scene in the movies he looks at, he is a keen observer of actors and how they reinforce or challenge the ideological narratives of the script.
• 
  Mick Meyers

  I have read a few of Peter biskinds books they are well researched and are an interesting read.books that give an insight to some well known and not so well known films and gives a different take on them.i am still of a belief that as alfred Hitchcock supposed to have said if he were to deliver messages at all he would have become a postman.
• 
  Kieran McAndrew

  Peter Biskind has always been able to break down complex arguments into something accessible to everyday readers and 'Seeing is Believing: How Hollywood Taught Us to Stop Worrying and Love the 50s' is a useful and thought provoking book exploring the complex politics of American cinema in the 1950s (as ever, there is some overlap of era).
• 
  Michael O.

  Biskind's absolutely right about pretty much everything he says, but the book is clearly an early one for him, and grows repetitively tedious, and needed editing. Still, he remains a fun writer, and no book this correct, no matter its stylistic issues, deserves less than four stars.
• 
  Martin Empson

  
  http://resolutereader.blogspot.com/20...
• 
  Tracey

  NOT AT LIB 10/08 - Referenced in The Mouse Machine (Telotte)