Screen Time: James Harvey's 'Watching Them Be'

For Screen Time this week, Stephanie and Kerri discuss movies and books including the new book, James Harvey's "Watching Them Be."

From Kirkus Reviews:

A star's personality, the author contends, transcends particular performances to generate "enforced intimacy" with the viewer. "A screen star," he writes, "generally appropriates her role rather than disappearing into it (as an ordinary actor might do)." Greta Garbo, for example, "offered something that approached sublimity," which emerged even in the "dead weight" of a movie like Anna Karenina (1935). Ingrid Bergman shone like "a goddess" even when miscast, "because it's her more than the character...that you respond to." Beginning with stars of the 1930s and '40s, Harvey analyzes performances by Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Bette Davis, John Wayne, Bergman and Charles Laughton.