James Harvey, whose "meticulous, capacious books on silver-screen love, romantic comedy and the mysteries of star quality are required reading for cinephiles," died May 15, the New York Times reported. He was 90. Harvey "wasn't a popular film critic with a cozy berth at a major publication, or an academic theorist presiding over a formidable film studies department," but his three books were each "more than a decade in the making and meticulously yet gorgeously written."
His first title, Romantic Comedy in Hollywood: From Lubitsch to Sturges (1987), made his reputation. The book was a celebration and analysis of what he called "Hollywood's essential genius," the screwball comedy. Foster Hirsch, a film historian at Brooklyn College, said, "Even if you thought you knew a film, he taught you something more about it."
On NPR in 2008, novelist Anthony Giardina called Harvey "the Samuel Johnson of film writing," and said Movie Love in the Fifties (2001) was the best film book he had ever read. Harvey's third book, Watching Them Be: Star Presence on the Screen From Garbo to Balthazar (2014), "examined the ineffable, transcendent qualities of leading movie actors," the Times wrote.
"He described acting as well or better than anybody," said film critic and author Molly Haskell. "I think he wasn't better known because he only wrote these enormous books. But I think he was one of the great movie critics. He saw the paradox of Hollywood, and you have to have an appreciation for paradox if you love Hollywood. How the most commercial movie can somehow yield art and beauty."
Friend and author Phillip Lopate said: "Part of what was so magical about his books is that he understood the game of romantic comedies, but he treated them seriously, not as something campy. So much film writing is glib or gossipy. Also, he knew other things. He loved opera and the ballet and the theater. He had what Renata Adler said was necessary for being a good critic: He had a well-stocked mind."