"Working the terrain pioneered by Otis Ferguson (jazz-informed, conversational, wryly commonsensical) and James Agee (word-drunk, sporadically antic, socially conscious as all get out), Farber established a pared-down, acerbic niche that allowed him to develop his style by careful degrees. Writing as a conventional reviewer--or disguised as one--his work during the Second World War gives a marvelous sense of life on the home front even as he gradually finds ways of slicing through the prevailing modes of propaganda, movie and otherwise."
In the Los Angeles Times, Howard Hampton reviews the Library of America's edition of Farber on Film: The Complete Film Writings of Manny Farber.
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