‘Great, very well researched and documented, full of incisive analysis, careful, sharp. Intelligent.’
Director and screenwriter; personal and unsolicited email to the author concerning the Cy Endfield book, July 31, 2015.
‘Nonetheless, the Endfield who Neve presents in his extremely well-researched book is rather more than the down-to-earth populist to Losey’s self-conscious artist.’
Journal of British Cinema and Television, vol. 13, issue 1 (January 2016), pp. 152-55.
‘Like Edgar G. Ulmer, Phil Karlson, and Joseph H. Lewis, Cy Endfield is another example of someone who laboured in the recesses of the celluloid kingdom, produced small but polished gems, and now deserves his close-up, which Neve has provided complete with front lighting.’
Film & History, 48.1 (Summer 2018), pp. 89-90.
‘We have a privileged insight into Endfield’s political thinking during this period – intuitive, compassionate and sceptical – thanks to his ongoing correspondence with (Paul) Jarrico, detailed in a superb biography by Brian Neve.’
Artforum, November 20, 2015 <artforum.com/film/id=56363>
‘There are a number of excellent histories of ‘political films’ in America – Brian Neve’s breakthrough study Film and Politics in America remains the finest of them.’
The Politics of Hollywood Cinema (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), p. 2.
‘In this sharp and exceptionally well-researched new book The Cinema of an American Outsider, Brian Neve expertly navigates the treacherous waters of “Kazan studies”.’
Sight & Sound, 19, 5, (May 2009), p. 93.
‘The two most recent additions to the already voluminous Kazan literature are of considerable value … Neve’s political sophistication enriches the inevitable chapter on Kazan and the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Neve’s social concerns do not come at the expense of aesthetics.’
Cineaste, Winter 2009, pp. 77-78.
‘It’s thoroughly researched and makes judicious use of previous scholarship on Kazan, of Kazan’s own writings and interviews, and of a wide range of archival material, not least the Kazan papers at Wesleyan University and the information on the Production Code Administration in the Margaret Herrick Library. Neve is also insightful on the evolution of Kazan’s political views.’
Professor of English, University of Tennessee, Film Quarterly, LXII/4 (2009), pp. 86-87.
It is a commonplace to say that we need to remember the dark days of our own history so that we don’t repeat it. Reading the book from cover to cover …. is a valuable experience not just of discovery but of remembering’
University of Oklahoma, in Film Quarterly (on “UnAmerican Hollywood”, 2007).
‘I read with great interest your review of both On Directing and Brian Neve’s Elia Kazan: the Cinema of an American Outsider, two books to be recommended for a better knowledge of the director …’
Editor-in-Chief, Positif, letter to the editor, Cineaste, 32/2, Spring 2010, p. 8.
‘Most employ primary sources effectively to provide deep context for their topics. Particularly imaginative are Jeff Smith’s detailed study of The Robe (1953) as allegory, Brian Neve’s work on Robert Rossen …. All offer rich insight on the impact of the cultural environment on the films crafted by the Hollywood left.’
University of Wisconsin, The Journal of American History, 95/2, (2008), pp. 591-92.
‘For a fine book that explores the work of the left-wing filmmakers in Hollywood, though the crisis of identity and the new culture of anxiety are not his main concerns, see Brian Neve, Film and Politics in America: A Social Tradition (London: Routledge, 1992). May comments further on the early dominance of academic approaches that saw film as either apolitical or as serving ‘the conservative function of saving capitalism’. May: ‘A welcome exception to these trends can be found in two books’ (including Neve (1992)).
Professor of American Studies, University of Minnesota, The Big Tomorrow: Hollywood and the Politics of the American Way (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), pp. 302, 332.
‘Neve’s account is judicious and grounded in evidence – he cites contemporary sources and participants as well as the ideas of subsequent writers on film noir. Precisely because of this, he is careful to avoid arguing either that liberal and left-wing concerns were restricted to noirs, or that noir itself was an ideologically uniform phenomenon.’
Professor of Film, Exeter University, in Genre and Hollywood (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), p. 159.
On work on the practice of politically resonant film-making in this era: ‘Easily the best of the full-length treatments is Brian Neve, Film and Politics in America: A Social Tradition.’
Director of the Oral History of the American Left, New York University, ‘The Hollywood Left: Aesthetics and Politics’, New Left Review, 212, 1995, p. 104
‘What is most distinctive about Neve’s book is his discussion of how radical writers and directors informed a number of films from the late thirties through the war and early post-war years with a touch of left critique.’ Neve has written a consistently intelligent, informative book about a subject where the film’s text is usually sacrificed to the critic’s intellectual inventiveness or the ideological imperatives of his perspective.’
Professor of Cinema Studies, City University of New York Graduate School, Film Quarterly, 1993/94.
‘This book is exhaustively researched. It validates Robert Stam’s insistence on the value of archival materials. When Neve ‘examines the director’s role as part of the changing process of filmmaking’, he does not rely on argument. His conclusions are supported by extensive primary source materials. This effort yields many insights and opens directions for future research. It may prove exceptionally useful for understanding how directing is impacted by new business models of development, production, promotion and distribution.
Chapman University, USA., Scope: an online journal of film and television studies, 20 (2011).
If you would like to get in contact with me, please use the form, below. I will get back to you as soon as possible.
Thank you, Brian.
