It depends on your tolerance for academic language. Although it's not great scholarship (the bibliography is pitifully small, the theoretical grounding is shaky, and I thought he elided the characters Fred and Ginger play into Fred and Ginger the people a little too much), it definitely wasn't written with a popular audience in mind. But I did find it enjoyable, and I thought he made some good connections between the films, and about the structure of the series as a whole. He offers some interesting close readings of the plots of each film, although I don't always agree with his interpretation. But pretty much no one else has written on the plots of the films, and he did manage to convince me that there was more there than there appears to be at first glance.
He barely mentions the dancing at all, though, so if you're interested in something about that I'd go with the old standbys of Croce and Mueller, unless you have/have read them already.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2010-01-12 03:15 am (UTC)It depends on your tolerance for academic language. Although it's not great scholarship (the bibliography is pitifully small, the theoretical grounding is shaky, and I thought he elided the characters Fred and Ginger play into Fred and Ginger the people a little too much), it definitely wasn't written with a popular audience in mind. But I did find it enjoyable, and I thought he made some good connections between the films, and about the structure of the series as a whole. He offers some interesting close readings of the plots of each film, although I don't always agree with his interpretation. But pretty much no one else has written on the plots of the films, and he did manage to convince me that there was more there than there appears to be at first glance.
He barely mentions the dancing at all, though, so if you're interested in something about that I'd go with the old standbys of Croce and Mueller, unless you have/have read them already.