Volume 4 in The Works of James Agee series presents the writer’s two most famous screenplays: for The African Queen, his collaboration with Huston, and for The Night of the Hunter, the only film ever directed by actor Charles Laughton. Not only does the book offer both the first draft and final shooting script for each work, it also features meticulous annotations by editor Jeffrey Couchman and a wealth of archival material, similarly annotated. Included, for The African Queen, are variants of key scenes; relevant fragments by two other writers, John Collier and Peter Viertel; and notes that Agee wrote from his hospital bed while recovering from a heart attack. The result is a remarkable window into the complex process by which a story is shaped and reshaped before the cameras roll. Most notable about the section on The Night of the Hunter (which Agee did not live to see in its final form) is the inclusion of the never-before-published first draft, rediscovered in 2003. This debunks forever the myth that Agee had produced a massive, unfilmable mess that Laughton discarded and rewrote from scratch. In fact, Laughton preserved essential structural elements of Agee’s script along with important dramatic and visual ideas that originated with Agee and not with Davis Grubb’s source novel. The African Queen and The Night of the Hunter stand today as undisputed Hollywood classics: the former a wonderfully comic adventure tale with delightful star turns by Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn, the latter a unique, noirish fable in which Robert Mitchum’s “Preacher” emerges as one of cinema’s most unforgettable villains. For Agee scholars, film scholars, and the countless admirers of these masterful movies, this volume is a feast. Jeffrey Couchman, an adjunct professor of media culture at the College of Staten Island, is the author of The Night of the Hunter: A Biography of a Film. He is also editing forthcoming volumes of Agee’s other screenplays.
Volume 4 in The Works of James Agee series presents the writer’s two most famous screenplays: for The African Queen, his collaboration with Huston, and for The Night of the Hunter, the only film ever directed by actor Charles Laughton. Not only does the book offer both the first draft and final shooting script for each work, it also features meticulous annotations by editor Jeffrey Couchman and a wealth of archival material, similarly annotated. Included, for The African Queen, are variants of key scenes; relevant fragments by two other writers, John Collier and Peter Viertel; and notes that Agee wrote from his hospital bed while recovering from a heart attack. The result is a remarkable window into the complex process by which a story is shaped and reshaped before the cameras roll. Most notable about the section on The Night of the Hunter (which Agee did not live to see in its final form) is the inclusion of the never-before-published first draft, rediscovered in 2003. This debunks forever the myth that Agee had produced a massive, unfilmable mess that Laughton discarded and rewrote from scratch. In fact, Laughton preserved essential structural elements of Agee’s script along with important dramatic and visual ideas that originated with Agee and not with Davis Grubb’s source novel. The African Queen and The Night of the Hunter stand today as undisputed Hollywood classics: the former a wonderfully comic adventure tale with delightful star turns by Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn, the latter a unique, noirish fable in which Robert Mitchum’s “Preacher” emerges as one of cinema’s most unforgettable villains. For Agee scholars, film scholars, and the countless admirers of these masterful movies, this volume is a feast. Jeffrey Couchman, an adjunct professor of media culture at the College of Staten Island, is the author of The Night of the Hunter: A Biography of a Film. He is also editing forthcoming volumes of Agee’s other screenplays.
The African Queen and The Night of the Hunter: First and Final Screenplays
944The African Queen and The Night of the Hunter: First and Final Screenplays
944Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9781621902355 |
---|---|
Publisher: | University of Tennessee Press |
Publication date: | 02/28/2017 |
Series: | Collected Works of James Agee , #4 |
Edition description: | 1st Edition |
Pages: | 944 |
Product dimensions: | 6.60(w) x 9.30(h) x 2.30(d) |