George Cukor's People

Enlightening . . . McBride offers shrewd insight into Cukor’s approach to filmmaking . . . Film buffs will find plenty of food for thought. * Publishers Weekly *
As Joseph McBride, a film historian, argues in his splendid George Cukor’s People, what made Cukor great also makes him slippery. “The critic can describe the way Cukor gets from this to this to this,” the author notes, “but how can he freeze each frame and tell you what this is?” The answer, Mr. McBride tells us, is performance: Cukor, always known (or dismissed) as a “woman’s director,” was a guru of film actors, and it is through these actors that we see Cukor’s genius. * The Wall Street Journal *
McBride appraises Cukor’s craft throughout his long career of working intimately with actors in dozens of films, finding themes and throughlines. …McBride offers strong evidence that he was in fact “one of the finest actors’ directors.”… A “widely admired but little understood director” is given his due. * Kirkus Reviews *
Brilliant . . . exciting . . . Cukor [is] an underestimated master if ever there was one. . . . The gamble of McBride’s book is to prove without hesitation that you can be an author without having to control all the aspects of making a film. . . . McBride describes the director as a great dreamer. * Positif *
George Cukor’s People is a fascinating examination of Cukor’s work and an important contribution to the study of the golden age of American film. * New York Journal of Books *
George Cukor’s People: Acting for a Master Director is one of McBride’s most innovative works to date and indispensable for anyone interested not only in Cukor but in directing in general. McBride possesses a skill that few of his peers can claim: a vocabulary for critically analyzing screen acting and how its gestures and movements cohere with the director and cinematographer’s tools. * IndieWire *
Joseph McBride has produced a new and remarkable study, this time of longtime Hollywood filmmaker George Cukor. [McBride] brings to his work the instincts of a hard-nosed, genuinely radical investigative reporter combined with a sometimes touching romanticism. * World Socialist Web Site *
Joseph McBride is a natural resource, one whose unique approach to film analysis combines first-person witness, deep study of the context and history of the Hollywood production system, and an uncanny recall for the details and essence of a director’s mise-en-scène. Here, his keen and affectionate "actors-first" approach to his subject echoes Cukor's own elusive, sensitive style, forming a portrait made of portraits of others. As ever with McBride, you'll be driven to seek out films you've never even wondered about and to reencounter others that you recall only as passing dreams. -- Jonathan Lethem, author of Brooklyn Crime Novel
An enticing idea—examining the work of a pantheon director through the iconic performances that adorn his films—is dazzlingly manifested here by singular film historian Joseph McBride. McBride’s fresh take on George Cukor gifts us with lively looks at his work with actors both celebrated (Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, James Stewart, Cary Grant, Marilyn Monroe) and less so (Lew Ayres, Fredric March, Hattie McDaniel). And he reminds us that Cukor—too often dismissed as tasteful, amusing, but lightweight—was in fact an artist of extraordinary depth, virtuosity, and understanding. -- Julie Kirgo, essayist and film historian
This is one of the best books in McBride's distinguished career, and a book that Cukor has long deserved. Critics have often described Cukor as an “actor’s director,” but nobody has done so much as McBride to analyze what the term means. He is a first-rate critic—sensitive, forthright, and eloquent. -- James Naremore, author of Some Versions of Cary Grant
For too long, Cukor's reputation has been as a studio-bound “woman’s director." Au contraire, as McBride shows us in his definitive study, which combines personal reminiscences of Cukor with a masterly analysis of his films, Cukor was an adventurous and modern filmmaker—plumbing depths in stories and performances, always visually resourceful and imaginative. -- Patrick McGilligan, author of George Cukor: A Double Life