Films in Review -- complete year 1973 (10 issues)

New York: National Board of Review. Very Good+. 1973. (Vol. XXIV, Nos. 1-10). Magazine. [all issues are VG+ or better (many close to Fine), with various bits of minor external wear, the only serious flaw being a diagonal crease at the bottom corner of the front cover of the April issue; all issues are complete and internally clean]. (B&W photographs) A full year of issues of this erstwhile (and somewhat idosyncratic) film journal, most noted (and valued) by film buffs for its deeply-researched career articles (often corrected or supplemented by attentive readers in subsequent issues' Letters columns). This year's career-article subjects are: Van Heflin, Lois Wilson, Joseph Schildkraut, Jean Negulesco, Danny Kaye, Vera Miles, Wallace Beery, Betty Grable, Rouben Mamoulian, William Holden, Gloria Jean (by herself), Lon Chaney Jr., Clarence Brown, and Eleanor Boardman. And of course there were special-focus articles, often on esoteric topics such as "The Mechanical Music Makers" (about various devices and instruments that accompanied silent films). (If any of these career articles interests you, see the NOTE at the end.) Most of the current film releases of the year are reviewed (often quite quirkily or crankily), and as a regular reader of this magazine during this period, I can testify that the regular critics, who were very much writing from an "old-school" perspective, could often be hilariously off the mark with regard to films that didn't line up with their sensibilities -- but at the same time, they were sometimes surprisingly pithy and perceptive.) There were regular columns devoted to films on TV, film music, and film collecting -- and of course the Letters section, a veritable hotbed of dedicated and knowledgeable readers sending in corrections, additions, arguments and additional perspectives (one regular sub-heading in the Letters column was "Erudition Wanted & Supplied." NOTE, please, that if you are interested in one particular career article or other individual feature story, but don't want to buy the whole set just to get it, please send us an inquiry; we are deeply stocked on this periodical, and may well be able to supply you with the individual issue you're seeking, at a modest price. .