The Golden Screen - Dily Powell

From the doyenne of British film critics comes this encyclopedic collection of reviews taken from an unrivalled career spanning more than fifty distinguished years.

Dilys Powell began writing her regular Sunday Times column in Hollywood’s Golden Year of 1939 when such classic films as Stagecoach, Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz hit the world’s screens. Since then she has continued to this day to bring her sharp critical faculties, allied with a rare and sympathetic open-mindedness, to bear on the latest screenings.

Grouped alphabetically within eras, the reviews in this collection are presented as they were written. Often they provide the explanation of a film’s subsequent fate; sometimes we are left wondering why a neglected film whose qualities she so quickly detected should have failed to make an impact. It rapidly emerges that not only does she have views on leading actors and directors – especially such favourites as Garland and Garbo, Hitchcock and Hawks, Streisand and Streep – but she also has a remarkable talent for spotting future stars from way down the cast list. Above all, though, this remarkable collection provides a prescient and hugely entertaining survey of the state of the movie industry over the last half-century through the eyes of one of its most sterling critics and most unwavering admirers.