Includes index

A collection of signature writings by the former "The New Yorker" critic offers insight into her ability to capture cinematic details and includes appraisals of such works as "Bonnie and Clyde", "The Godfather", and "Last Tango in Paris."

Introduction / Sanford Schwartz -- Movies, the Desperate Art -- from I Lost it at the Movies. The Glamour of Delinquency ; Golden Coach ; Shoeshine ; Breathless, and the Daisy Miller Doll ; West Side Story ; Lolita ; Jules and Jim ; Billy Budd ; Yojimbo ; Devi ; Hud, Deep in the Divided Heart of Hollywood -- from Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Laurence Olivier as Othello ; Marlon Brando: An American Hero ; Movie Brutalists ; Tourist in the City of Youth [Blow-up] ; Movies on Television ; Orson Welles: There Ain't No Way [Falstaff / Chimes at Midnight] ; Bonnie and Clyde -- from Going Steady. Movies as Opera [China Is Near] ; A Minority Movie [La Chinoise] ; Faces ; A Sign of Life [Shame] ; Trash, Art, and the Movies ; Saintliness [Simon of the Desert] -- from Deeper into Movies. The Bottom of the Pit [Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid] ; High School ; Fellini's "Mondo Trasho" [Fellini Satyricon] ; Notes on Heart and Mind ; Poetry of Images [The Conformist] ; Pipe Dream [McCabe & Mrs. Miller] ; Helen of Troy, Sexual Warrior [The Trojan Women] ; Louis Malle's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog [Murmur of the Heart] ; Urban Gothic [The French Connection] ; Fall and Rise of Vittorio De Sica [The Garden of the Finzi-Continis] ; Stanley Strangelove [A Clockwork Orange] ; Alchemy [The Godfather] ; Collaboration and Resistance [The Sorrow and the Pity] -- from Reeling. Tango [Last Tango in Paris] ; Pop Versus Jazz [Lady Sings the Blues] ; Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers Book ; Days and Nights in the Forest ; A Rip-Off with Genius [Marilyn] ; After Innocence [The Last American Hero] ; Everyday Inferno [Mean Streets] ; Movieland -- Bums' Paradise [The Long Goodbye] ; Moments of Truth [The Iceman Cometh] ; Politics and Thrills ; Survivor [Sleeper] ; Killing Time [Magnum Force] ; Cicely Tyson Goes to the Fountain [The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman] ; Used Madonna [The Mother and the Whore] ; When the Saints Come Marching In [Lenny] ; Fathers and Sons [The Godfather, Part II] ; Beverly Hills as a Big Bed [Shampoo] ; Coming: Nashville -- from When the Lights Go Down. The Man from Dream City [Cary Grant] ; All for Love [The Story of Adèle H.] ; Walking into Your Childhood [The Magic Flute] ; Notes on the Nihilist Poetry of Sam Peckinpah [The Killer Elite] ; Artist as a Young Comedian [Next Stop, Greenwich Village] ; Underground Man [Taxi Driver] ; Sparkle ; Notes on Evolving Heroes, Morals, Audiences ; Hot Air [Network] ; Marguerite Duras [The Truck] ; A Woman for All Seasons? [Julia] ; Shivers [The Fury] ; Fear of Movies ; Bertrand Blier ; God-Bless-America Symphony [The Deer Hunter] ; Pods [Invasion of the Body Snatchers] -- from Taking It All In. Why Are Movies So Bad? or, The Numbers ; Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith ; Man Who Made Howard Hughes Sing [Melvin and Howard] ; Used Cars ; Religious Pulp, or The Incredible Hulk [Raging Bull] ; Atlantic City ; Hey, Torquemada [History of the World, Part I] ; Portrait of the Artist as a Young Gadgeteer [Blow Out] ; Pennies from Heaven ; Shoot the Moon ; Richard Pryor Live on the Sunset Strip ; E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial ; Up the River [Fitzcarraldo, Burden of Dreams] ; Tootsie ; Memory [The Night of the Shooting Stars] -- from State of the Art. A Masterpiece [The Leopard] ; Perfectionist [Yentl] ; Golden Kimonos [The Makioka Sisters] -- from Hooked. Out There and In Here [Blue Velvet] ; Irish Voices [The Dead] ; Lady from the Sea [High Tide] -- from Movie Love. Unreal [Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown] ; A Wounded Apparition [Casualties of War] ; Satyr [My Left Foot] ; Grifters