The Film Criticism of Vernon Young is a collection of Young's work subsequent to the publication of On Film (1970-1986) and of his early essays and reviews not included in that book (1949-1961). At first a novelist, a director for theater and radio, and an actor in those mediums as well as occasionally in the movies, Young made his mark as a freelance critic of film, art, and literature and as a book reviewer. He contributed to a number of publications, among them The Kenyon Review, The American Scholar, The Sewanee Review, Ten New Criterion, and The Hudson Review, for which journal he became the regular film critic in 1955. He published two books of film criticism in his lifetime: Cinema Borealis: Ingmar Bergman and the Swedish Ethos (1971) and On Film: Unpopular Essays on a Popular Art (1972). The latter nominated for a National Book Award was made up of pieces that had originally appeared in several magazines, The Hudson Review prominent among them.