Learning on ScreenLeslie Halliwell and His Film Guides
Binder is particularly good at assembling impressionistic reconstructions of Halliwell’s experiences from the traces left there and elsewhere
In tracing his life and work, Binder draws extensively on Halliwell’s own publications. Besides the various editions of the two voluminous encyclopaedias, these include an early-years memoir, Seats in All Parts (1985), mainly concerned with Halliwell’s childhood in Bolton and young adulthood in Cambridge. Binder is particularly good at assembling impressionistic reconstructions of Halliwell’s experiences from the traces left there and elsewhere, occasionally taking an imaginative liberty with the record in order to render his account more vivid. Besides his unofficial role as the nation’s film-buff-in-chief Halliwell also served for nearly twenty years as film buyer for the ITV network and latterly for Channel Four. In this capacity he not only acquired but also helped to schedule many of the movies he evoked in print, allowing younger viewers like Binder the opportunity to catch up with countless treasures rarely revived even in repertory cinemas. This aspect of his legacy is chronicled in gratifying detail; indeed, the book takes its title from one such film, Lost Horizon (1937), identified by Halliwell himself as being among his personal favourites, to which he had written an imaginary sequel in the form of a novel, Return to Shangri-La (1987).
Perhaps inevitably given the influence that Halliwell evidently exerted on Binder’s tastes (a common experience, as the present reviewer can also testify) there are passages when this biography is insufficiently critical. In discussing the hostility Halliwell sometimes generated in contemporaries such as Alexander Walker (who declined to write a Who’s Who entry for him) and Philip French (who deplored his narrow cultural purview), Binder tends understandably to side with the target against his attackers. In doing so he often reinforces the many blind spots to which Halliwell confessed and underwrites the anti-intellectualism which he was perhaps less willing to acknowledge. A more detached biographer might have pulled him up more severely on some of his outrageous dismissals and neglectful omissions (notably the marginal treatment of non-Anglophone cinemas in the encyclopaedias), though Binder does identify Halliwell’s weakness for indulging in long lists of film titles which probably meant more to him than to the reader.
Halliwell’s Horizon is a pleasure to read from beginning to end
However, a writer who was not to some degree under Halliwell’s spell would probably not have embarked on such a book at all. Binder’s own prose style is more fluent and elegant than self-publication might lead one to expect, and Halliwell’s Horizon is a pleasure to read from beginning to end. It could certainly benefit from tidying up by an expert copy-editor, but there are fewer mistakes than could have been anticipated. The author’s research has been thorough, and though the source notes could have been more rigorous and some of the secondary sources more scholarly (Binder’s main text for Hollywood history is Barry Norman’s anecdotal Talking Pictures), his pathway is well documented. Most importantly, the book is a worthy, loving tribute to its subject and clarifies his achievements for any user of the Filmgoer’s Companion or Film Guide who happens to wonder what their namesake did to deserve commemoration.
Dr Sheldon Hall
For more information about the book and its subject, visit: www.lesliehalliwell.com
