The Odyssey Of John Dos Passos

Although regarded as one of the more influential writers of the 20th century due to his experiments with form in his trilogy U.S.A., John Dos Passos' lifelong entanglement with politics kept him out of the front rank of modern novelists. Art in the service of a cause, no matter how just, is often art that sacrifices truth and honesty in favor of preaching. Yet, as this excellent documentary, narrated by Robert MacNeil and featuring readings by William Hurt, demonstrates, Dos Passos himself was a fascinating character. Tracing his checkered childhood as an exiled bastard son in Europe, his return to America and boarding school miseries at the age of 11, and his shift toward radical politics following his admission to Harvard at the age of 16, The Odyssey of John Dos Passos weaves a mesmerizing tale of childhood woe being transformed into anti-authoritarian rebelliousness. Combining newsreel clips from the 1920s through the 1950s, the film follows Dos Passos' political shift from longstanding defender of communism to staunch capitalist, his adventures with Hemingway and other expatriates living in Paris, and the influence of Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein's montage techniques on Dos Passos' writings. a good mix of biography and general literary criticism, the film's only real disappointment is Hurt's showboat readings of passages from Dos Passos. An excellent choice for general literature and biography collections. Highly recommended. (R. Pitman)