Taking us on walks through Paris; New York; Toronto; North Vancouver and Singapore; Mary Soderstrom examines how cites have changed the lives of ordinary citizens—in positive and negative ways. Making the city walkable again is crucial. The author looks to the future and suggests ways in which we can reorganize our lives and our cities.The idea that a city might not be walkable would never occur to anyone who lived before 1800. Over the past 200 years there have been dramatic changes to our cities. With the best intentions; Baron George Eugène Haussmann ruthlessly transformed Paris in the mid-19th century in an attempt to adapt the city to a new age. In North America cities were “redeveloped†to accommodate the automobile and automobile-dependent suburbs. The city was no longer walkable; and in the 1960s activist-writer Jane Jacobs began to critique many of the ideas about how cities should be organized.
#4471469 in eBooks 2008-01-29 2008-01-29File Name: B00D5XPJP0
Review
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Five StarsBy henri schindlerLOVELY BIOGRAPHY OF A FILM COLOSSUS5 of 5 people found the following review helpful. The appealing woman who largely invented film criticism and built audiences for great movies finally gets her dueBy James MorrisonA biography whose major characters include Ezra Pound; Nelson Rockefeller; and a Corsican olive smuggler isnt easy to classify. But it does make for a great read. In "Lady in the Dark"; biographer Robert Sitton has brought to life Iris Barry; whose remarkable journey included these and many other disparate individuals and whose influence on films continues today. Barrys story resonates beautifully with our time; and not merely because she spent a lifetime ignoring the rules about what women were or were not supposed to do.Daughter of a farmer and a fortune teller; she was an aspiring poet who mailed some of her teen-aged work to Ezra Pound. Impressed; Pound drew her into a literary circle that included T.S. Eliot and William Butler Yeats. She later began living with a member of the group; Wyndham Lewis; a British artist whose casual cruelty toward her included forcing her to leave their flat most afternoons to make way for his assignations with other women. She found solace in movie theatres. And gradually; a new focus for her energies. Soon she was writing occasional articles about movies.She aimed higher. Thanks to the first of her many velvety yet fearless assaults on upper class; male worlds; she got The Spectator; a stodgy pillar of the British establishment; to make her its first regular movie reviewer. Thus in 1923; she became the countrys - and possibly the worlds - first substantive film critic writing on deadline. In her new role; she championed half-forgotten films from the earliest days of cinema. She invented film categories and film terminology that are still in use today. She courageously endured the wrath of the British film industry by extolling American; French; German; and Soviet films that she found aesthetically superior to standard British fare.But how to build an audience for these esoteric films? Simple. Transform British film distribution and exhibition. Of course; she had a plan. There would be a club. Not just a "movie club"; but a "film society". Having managed a miraculous ascent though the rigid British class system; she used her hard-won skills to weave together the people who could provide the snob appeal needed to build a British society for the appreciation of artistic films. In a key move; she somehow recruited the elites most prominent skeptic of film as an art; the playwright George Bernard Shaw; to join the Board of her London Film Society. With the imprimatur of Shaw and other such prominent figures; the worlds first Film Society became a huge success.By then she was 29. Still ahead were the most consequential decades of her life.The rich tapestry of this life lay hidden away in disconnected pieces before Sitton; one of Barrys intellectual heirs; undertook this magnificent biography. From interviews; libraries; archives; personal collections; books; newspapers and magazines; hes reconnected all of the strands. Remarkably; he did it all without ever having met Barry; who died in 1969; or indeed having met most of the books main characters; who have also passed from the scene. As intense as this research must have been - and it fills up 45 pages in fine print at the end of the book - Sittons writing is inviting and graceful.He offers vivid observations and well-chosen quotations; but he doesnt shout. Clear and crisp; hes never overbearing. If there is more than one side to a story; he explains each side briefly and moves on. His refreshing fair-mindedness is just about the ideal way to absorb biography; not to mention history.Barrys subsequent years in the United States are somewhat better known; but Sitton draws out nuances and telling details. For two years; she was essentially unemployed in New York. At one point; she wrote to a friend that she "didnt have 45 cents". But her strategic skills didnt fail her. She moved methodically from friends and acquaintances to salons; and from there to contacts with the newly-founded Museum of Modern Art in New York.In another masterpiece of persuasion (admirably pieced together by Sitton); Barry convinced MoMA to develop a "film library". She would be the "librarian." Once inside of MoMA; she deftly guided the "library" into a "Department"; with her as its head. She then sketched out a plan for exhibiting critically-acclaimed films across the entire country -- a breathtaking expansion of her earlier British effort. She would not only encourage film societies to form across the U.S. Shed get universities to develop film studies programs. MoMA; the nexus of all of this activity; would identify and preserve the most important films. MoMA would also mount an ambitious daily film exhibition program; replete with critical notes on each film. And Barry would engineer and direct everything. Needing allies to pull all this off; she enlisted MoMA backers who were some of the richest men in America -- Nelson Rockefeller; Conger Goodyear; and John Hay Whitney.What she needed next was the films. In one of the most entertaining and amusing chapters of the book; Barry accomplishes perhaps the most inspiring feat of leadership in her long career. She goes to Hollywood to get the studios to part with their films. John Hay Whitney; who had financial interests there; makes some introductions for her. Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks; Sr.; grateful for the praise she bestowed on their films while she was in England; lend their mansion for a dinner party with movie moguls; directors and actors. After sceening some of her favorite silent movie clips; Barry addresses the assembled crowd. She promises them not further riches; but immortality. Astonishingly; it works. A bunch of hard-headed and decidedly non-artistic movie moguls begin opening their vaults and donating dozens of classic films -- prints and negatives -- to MoMA.Sitton delineates very well the historical impact this and other visionary Barry accomplishments of the 1930s. Not only did she build at MoMA the first; and for at least a generation the finest; American center for film studies; film criticism and film preservation. (It was the template from which the American Film Institute and the Film Society of Lincoln Center; among many others; were later developed.) And not only did she create the first nonprofit channel for the exhibition of theatrical films in the U.S.Above all; she literally saved our film heritage. Until 1952; motion pictures were shot on a nitrate film stock that chemically decomposes over a period of years and is notoriously prone to fires and explosions. Had not MoMA; and other archives following the example set by MoMA; begun preserving these films in the 1930s - had another ten or twenty years elapsed before serious film preservation efforts got underway - much if not most of the worlds film heritage from 1895 to 1952 probably would have been lost.Her career in the following years followed a good many plot twists; and Sitton is a great guide to them.D.W. Griffith; the pioneer American film director that Barry rescued from obscurity; essentially stabbed her in the back.Though she was serenely apolitical in an age of mind-boggling political excesses; politics often intruded on her work. In a letter that Sitton discovered; Barry noted wryly that she was thunderously criticized as a fascist supporter in 1938 and then as a communist sympathizer in 1940.She navigated treacherous office politics at MoMA; much of it involving her husband. Then he callously divorced her.She suffered a heart-breaking failure to reconcile with the two children shed had with Wyndham Lewis.During World War II; she became; for all practical purposes; a producer of wartime documentaries. She gathered together Frank Capra; John Huston and others to develop a patriotic documentary series.And so in 1943; the daughter of the fortune-teller and the farmer; the girl from the English countryside who wrote poetry; the unemployed woman in New York without 45 cents; sat next to President Franklin Roosevelt in the White House; planning war documentaries. She then produced the films.The stories that grew out of the wartime filmmaking effort are some of Sittons best; so Im not going to give them away. Youll have to read the book.After the war; Barry seemed to reassess her life and her views toward film. She came to admire Italian neo-realist films; criticizing American films as shed once criticized British ones.Then came her subsequent life in the South of France -- with an olive smuggler twenty years her junior; whom she met at the Cannes Film Festival. Im not going to divulge this story either. But it was as though she were starring in her own Italian movie. Scenes included Picasso and sort of a kidnapping.Throughout her life; there were many men who mistreated Barry or tried to block her way. But there were also some who remained steadfast friends and supporters. To the end of her life; she was partially supported by checks from one such admirer; Nelson Rockefeller; in recognition for her work in advancing and preserving film as an art.With this book; Robert Sitton has reciprocated Barrys gift to film art. Hes preserved and exhibited; for all to see and study; her remarkable life.Its one terrific book.0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. She loved Chaplin films and became a champion of film as ...By Emily W. LeiderThis is a first -rate biography of a fascinating woman who had a most unusual life. Born in England and raised by her grandmother; she was one of the first; maybe THE first; newspaper movie-reviewer in Britain. She loved Chaplin films and became a champion of film as an art. She moved to New York City and founded the Film Center at New Yorks Museum of Modern Art; a hub of film preservation and an archive I relied on when researching my own books on Mae West; Rudolph Valentino and Myrna Loy. Highly unconventional in her relationships; Iris Barry had two illegitimate children fathered by artist/writer Wyndham Lewis; a scoundrel by my lights; but the love of her life. Among her friends and associates were Picasso; Bunuel; D.W. Griffith; Marc Chagall; Ezra Pound and Charles Laughton. Robert Sitton has put together and fascinating and meticulously researched account. Bravo!