Pandaemonium

by Leslie Epstein

Book Overview

The definitive novel of Hollywood in its most glamorous era, "Pandaemonium" is an epic that examines the roots of film and its relation to the dark forces of the imagination. Narrated by the ever-wise... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312156227
• ISBN13: 9780312156220
• Release Date: May 1997
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Length: 398 Pages
• Weight: 3.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.6" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Funny, wicked look at pre WWII Hollywood

A really human portrait of mixing the personal and the political in the name of artistic endeavors, I found this book to be a wonderful read about Hollywood in its heyday. In the same way the author was unafraid to take on the Holocaust and protray it in the language of human survival for King of the Jews, Epstein is also unafraid to be both funny and frightening in this novel.

Hallucinatory Historical Fiction

Epstein, the son and nephew of the screenwriting Epstein brothers who were responsible for "Casablanca," among many other films, has used his family lore to construct a crazed, and compulsively readable tale set in the milieu of pre-WWII Hollywood. His narrator, Peter Lorre, is sick of playing Mr. Moto, and longs for the onset of war with Japan so that he might be freed from the shackles of his contract with the studio. The novel opens with Lorre accompanying a troupe of actors arriving in Salzburg, Austria, just prior to the Anschluss. They are to perform Antigone, but the German annexation endangers the Jews in the cast (Lorre included). The play's director, an extremely charismatic, one might say mesmerizing man named Rudolf Von Beckmann, carries on with the production, but is eventually forced to flee. Subsequently, Von Beckmann takes over the direction of a western already in production, and transforms it into a piece of reality-based film-making, in which he exerts his powers over the entire cast and crew, in an eerie parallel to events in Europe. All the while, Hollywood and the United States dither about, unable or unwilling to believe the reports that are being brought back, of the mass removal of Jews from the cities. This is a fine work of art, and one with plenty to deliver in the way of moral authority. Besides which, it's a good read!