Clarence Brown (Screen Classics)
by Gwenda Young and Kevin Brownlow
Greta Garbo proclaimed him as her favorite director. Actors, actresses, and even child stars were so at ease under his direction that they were able to deliver inspired and powerful performances. Academy--Award--nominated director Clarence Brown (1890--1987) worked with some of Hollywood's greatest stars, such as Clark Gable, Joan Crawford, Mickey Rooney, Katharine Hepburn, and Spencer Tracy. Known as the "star maker," he helped guide the acting career of child sensation Elizabeth Taylor (of who...
One of the most outstanding, enigmatic characters of the European intelligentsia in the latter half of the twentieth century, Pier Paolo Pasolini holds an important place in Western cultural history, particularly the history of the 1960s. As the author of poetry in the local language of his Italian province, as well of novels and theoretical essays, and as the director of remarkable films, and also as a graphic artist and painter, Pasolini concentrated on timeless, archaic themes: the fate of hu...
In 1999, Elia Kazan (1909-2003) received an honorary Oscar for lifetime achievement; it was a controversial award, for in 1952 he had given testimony to the HUAC Committee, for which he was ostracized by many. That Oscar also acknowledged Kazan's remarkable contribution to American and world cinema, making such films as "On the Waterfront" and "A Streetcar Named Desire". Kazan's life in the cinema is due a reassessment, one that is presented expertly and gracefully by Brian Neve in this book, dr...
After an unparalleled string of artistic and commercial triumphs in the 1950s and 1960s, Alfred Hitchcock hit a career lull with the disappointing Torn Curtain and the disastrous Topaz. In 1971, the depressed director traveled to London, the city he had left in 1939 to make his reputation in Hollywood. The film he came to shoot there would mark a return to the style for which he had become known and would restore him to international acclaim. Like The 39 Steps, Saboteur, and North by Northwest...
Since the early 1980s, Jim Jarmusch has produced a handful of idiosyncratic films that have established him as one of the most imaginatively allusive directors in the history of American cinema. Three of his films—Dead Man (1995), Ghost Dog (1999), and The Limits of Control (2009)—demonstrate the director’s unique take on Eastern and Aboriginal spirituality. In particular, they reflect Jarmusch’s rejection of Western monotheism’s fear-driven separation of life and death. While these films addres...
By any reasonable expectation, George Arliss should not have succeeded as a star, either on stage or in film. Yet he achieved a career enjoyed by very few in the performing arts. An actor, author, playwright, and filmmaker, George Arliss won acclaim for his work first on the stage and then later, most improbably, as a Hollywood movie star. His films achieved the rare distinction of being both artistic and financial successes. Though he was neither young nor handsome, Arliss found popular acclaim...
Edmund Hartmann arrived in Hollywood as a contract screenwriter in the early 1930s, and by the next decade had become producer of his own screenplays for Universal. He oversaw feature films for such diverse talents as John Carradine, Eve Arden, Jane Russell, Basil Rathbone, Hedy Lamarr, Victor McLaglen, Bob Cummings, Don Ameche, Ann Miller, Jackie Cooper, and Joan Fontaine. He could handle almost all types of cinema: mysteries, social dramas, fantasies, and westerns. But it was his facility for...
Jane Campion is one of the few women film-makers working today who has managed to create a unique body of work. A true independent film-maker, yet she has attracted 'A' List Hollywood superstars to appear in her films. Who else but Jane Campion could have convinced a tattooed Harvey Keitel to run buck-naked through the New Zealand landscape in The Piano, or for the multi-award winning Kate Winslet to pee down her legs in the middle of the desert in Holy Smoke? This book will cover Jane Campion's...
For over 50 years now, Jean-Luc Godard's work in cinema and video has innovated, provoked and inspired. Since the completion in 1998 of Histoire(s) du cinema, Godard has featured strongly in debates about audiovisual art and culture, especially regarding questions of historical memory, technological change, and the future of cinema in all its forms. This historical moment provides the perfect opportunity for a critical reassessment and redefinition of Godard's entire corpus and its key role with...
Winner of the 2006 Bram Stoker Award, Gospel of the Living Dead connects American social and religious views with the classic American movie genre of the zombie horror film. For nearly forty years, the films of George A. Romero have presented viewers with hellish visions of our world overrun by flesh-eating ghouls. This study proves that Romero's films, like apocalyptic literature or Dante's Commedia, go beyond the surface experience of repulsion to probe deeper questions of human nature and pur...
The films of Orson Welles inhabit the spaces of citiesfrom America’s industrializing midlandto its noirish borderlands, from Europe’s medieval fortresses to its Kafkaesque labyrinths and postwar rubblescapes. His movies take us through dark streets to confront nightmarish struggles for power, the carnivalesque and bizarre, and the shadows and light of human character. This ambitious new study explores Welles’s vision of cities by following recurring themes across his work, including urban tran...
'For days now I have tried to start this diary, but the clatter of my existence has warned me off; the first mark on the page eludes me...' Derek Jarman's Smiling in Slow Motion concludes the journey started in Modern Nature, these previously unpublished journals stretch from May 1991 until a fortnight before his death in February 1994. Part diary, part observation, part memoir, Jarman writes with his familiar honesty, wry humour and acuity. Friends, collaborators and enemies are catalogued as...
In this second volume of his autobiography, controversial film-maker Michael Powell, who died in 1990, offers an account of his life in the cinema industry, the many good and the many awful people he insulted, disliked and loved, and his arguments with film-company bosses. Shunned after the first screening of "Peeping Tom", which astonished his 1960s audience, Powell went to ground for many years until the young Martin Scorsese, a Powell admirer since childhood, went in search of his mentor and...
Rob Wagner's Script was a small, intellectual magazine—perhaps best described as a lesser, West Coast version of The New Yorker—published in Beverly Hills from 1929 to 1947. It was notable for the quality of its articles and essays and the celebrity status of many of its contributors. This anthology gathers together the best of the journal, including short stories by Charles Chaplin, profiles by Jim Tully and Dalton Trumbo, poetry by Jessamyn West, and articles by Upton Sinclair, Agnes de Mille...
Although Frank Capra (1897-1991) is best known as the director of It Happened One Night, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, You Can't Take It with You, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Arsenic and Old Lace, and It's a Wonderful Life , he was also an award-winning documentary filmmaker as well as a behind-the-scene force in the Director's Guild, the Motion Picture Academy, and the Producer's Guild. He worked with or knew socially everyone in the movie business from Mack Sennett, Chaplin, and Keaton in the s...
During his career, Michael Mann has drawn a singular and innovative line within the Hollywood industry. The Last of the Mohicans, Heat, Revelations, Ali, Collateral, Miami Vice, and even Public Enemies, have reshuffled the cards of American cinema to the point of making Mann one of the most important filmmakers of the last thirty years. Born in 1943 in Chicago, Michael Mann made Thief, his first film, in 1981. He went on to revolutionize television writing with the series Miami Vice and, in 199...
This collection of interviews traces the career of filmmaker Henry Hathaway from his beginnings as a child actor for the American Film Company in 1911 through his directorial triumphs How the West Was Won (1962) and True Grit (1969). Begun as a special project for the American Film Institute, this oral history has now been edited and is being released for the first time in book form. Polly Platt, production designer, screenwriter, and producer of such films as Broadcast News, Pretty Baby, and Th...
Ray Harryhausen's animated creatures sparkled with predatory alertness and subtle quirks of behavior that stamped each with a distinct and memorable personality. His use of stop-motion animation--a method of animating movable models and puppets--brought dinosaurs and monsters to life on the silver screen. Many animators and special effects wizards, like Phil Tippett of Jurassic Park and Jim Aupperle of Planet of Dinosaurs who are still working on prehistoric-based films, openly credit Ray Harryh...
An exhaustive study of the major directors of horror films in the past six decades, a genre always popular but often critically snubbed. For each director there is a complete filmography including television work, a career summary, critical assessment, and behind-the-scenes production information. The book covers not only films both old and new, but also directors from Italy, Spain, Australia, Belgium, and elsewhere. Fifty directors are covered in depth, but there is an additional section on the...
Louis Malle (Conversations with Filmmakers)
A filmmaker whose work exhibits a wide range of styles and approaches, Louis Malle (1932–1995) was the only French director of his generation to enjoy a significant career in both France and the United States. Although Malle began his career alongside members of the French New Wave like François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, and Claude Chabrol, he never associated himself with that group. Malle is perhaps best known for his willingness to take on such difficult or controversial topics as suicide, i...
An essential text on filmmaking that every student, scholar, and teacher of films should own. In it, some of the motion picture industry's most important directors including Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Howard Hawks, Louis Malle, Federico Fellini, Blake Edwards, Francois Truffaut, and René Clair answer questions on the decisions that all directors must make before filming a movie, questions that help the reader understand the concept of filmmaking. They cover all aspects of filmmaking incl...
In 1956, at the age of 22, Alan Bates was cast in John Osborne's controversial play, "Look Back in Anger". The play changed the course of British theatre - and of Alan's life. With a sudden rush of fame, he became a member of a new circle of actors at the Royal Court: the English Stage Company. He also worked steadily in major films, from "A Kind of Loving" and "Zorba the Greek to Women in Love" - and he won international acclaim for his performance as Guy Burgess in the television adaptation of...
Film as Film: The Collected Writings of Gregory J. Markopoulos
by Gregory J. Markopoulos