TAKE TWO: A Film Teacher’s Unconventional Story

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In reassessing his rich and rewarding 50-year career in film studies, this trailblazing author provides a striking snapshot of motion picture history from its beginnings to the present.  Eighteen thought-provoking chapters filled with lively anecdotes, enlightened criticism, and unique celebrity profiles recall the major events, famous personalities, and wide-ranging industrial upheavals of the twentieth century’s most important art.

A particularly significant aspect of this analytical memoir is Professor Manchel’s candid focus on the behind-the-scenes discussion of the political pressures affecting academic teaching and research. Educators, film teachers and students, and the general public will find this cultural chronicle informative, nostalgic, entertaining, provocative, and relevant, especially in those well-documented chapters that review the portrayal of marginalized people in the mass media.

By the time the reader reaches the moving epilogue, the rebellious boy from the streets of New York who helped shape film studies as a new academic field in public and higher education proves that film is one of the world’s best weapons against social injustice. No one who reads this book will ever wonder why the passionate author loves his profession!

“I find the narrative itself, the memoir, worthy of standing alone. It is interesting, compelling, and enjoyable and could be of great use for students looking to understand the times.”

—Howard Suber, Professor, UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television

“While the book is reader friendly, it nonetheless deserves the most serious attention from scholars in the field, aspiring teachers, and readers concerned with a broad and yet in-depth study that bears on the relation between cinema and American culture. This book conveys why movies still mean so much to so many and does so by a master storyteller.”

—Richard Sugarman, Professor, Department of Religion, University of Vermont

“In Take Two, film studies pioneer Frank Manchel expertly guides the reader through the twists and turns of his remarkable career as a film scholar in this captivating memoir. As much a history of film studies as an autobiography, this erudite and witty book is also valuable for its inclusion of some of Manchel’s most provocative and enlightening articles and presentations.”

—Denise Youngblood, Professor of History, University of Vermont and the author of Russian War Films: On the Cinema Front, 1914-2005