[Moviola] is less a novel about Hollywood than a misty-eyed recounting of a favourite dream.

Garson Kanin wrote the scripts of the sharpest Hepburn-Tracy comedies. More recently he has been described as the "Boswell of Hollywood"; and in this celebration of a lifetime in the cinema he endeavours to live up to the name. His subject is Benjamin J. Farber, last of the Hollywood moguls and a fictional composite of several of that ilk…. At ninety-two, he is forgetful about most things—but not about the history of Hollywood, of which he has total recall…. Mr Kanin's narrative problem is to accommodate Ben within what amounts to a series of potted biographies. But the facts intrude into the fiction, and Ben is frequently and inevitably relegated to the role of spectator, conveniently on hand at many of the key Hollywood events.

Large sections of the novel are consequently...