Sir Alexander Korda proved - with films like The Thief of Bagdad, The Four Feathers and The Third Man - that you could make movies in England with all the glamour and international appeal of Hollywood. But his own story is more extraordinary than any film he ever made.He was an adventurer who witnessed some of the most dramatic moments in the 20th century. In Hungary he took part in a communist revolution, in Berlin he witnessed the decadence of the Weimar republic. He was in Hollywood during th...
Published to coincide with the centenary of his birth, this is an examination of the personal concerns which Howard Hawks brought to his films, and which enabled him to stamp his distinctive signature on what once appeared to be a random assortment of genre pieces. Hawks's discussion of his working methods in this frequently irreverent book represents a master class in the practical art of film direction.
Although Alfred Hitchcock is well-known for his interviews - especially his celebrated one with Francois Truffaut - he also wrote extensively about the cinema during the course of his life. These writings, which are gathered together in this book, are meditations on film art in general, as well as attempts to define his own art in particular, expressed in a manner that reflects the delight that he took in film-making. The essays focus directly on Hitchcock's life, his films and his film practice...
Roberto Rossellini
by David Forgacs, Sarah Lutton, and Geoffrey Nowell-Smith
This overview of Roberto Rossellini's works examines issues and themes covering all phases of his career. The directors influence on film-making and criticism is covered and the significance of Rossellini's relationships with Ingrid Bergman and Anna Magnani is also discussed.
This text examines the work of Pedro Almodovar, the Spanish director whose nine features to date include the comedy, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988), the S & M melodrama, Tie me up! Tie me down! (1990) and the family romance, High Heels (1991). This study argues not only that Almodovar is a highly skilled manipulator of cinematic form, but also that his films raise important questions-of gender, nationality and sexuality-which demand a serious response from their audience. Desir...
This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Animator Norman McLaren is best known for his experimental films using pioneering techniques and his work as founder of the animation department of the National Film Board of Canada (NFB), but little mention is made of his Scottish heritage or his personal life. Nichola Dobson examines some of the key events and people in his life through a close examination of...
Charles Crichton is perhaps best remembered as the director of the unlikely blockbuster hit A Fish Called Wanda, made when he was seventy-seven years old. But the most significant part of his career was spent at Ealing Studios in the 1940s and 1950s, working on such beloved comedies as Hue and Cry, The Lavender Hill Mob and The Titfield Thunderbolt. Nonetheless, as this pioneering study of Crichton’s work reveals, his filmmaking skills extended way beyond comedy to wartime dramas and film noir,...
This book provides the first detailed analysis of the work of four important contemporary directors whose work falls between the reductive labels of 'auteur cinema' and 'popular cinema'. Their work is contextualised within this timely investigation into the shifting relationship between the privileged status of the auteur and questions of genre, gender and cinematic production in France today. This important contribution to understanding the shifting landscapes of contemporary French film identi...
Reservoir Dogs launched Quentin Tarantino as a pioneering new filmmaker and director - his hip-talking, hypnotically shot, ultraviolent US indie films revolutionised American filmmaking and spawned a number of imitators. Jim Smith examines the iconic films Tarantino has directed including Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown and Kill Bill, as well as exploring the Tarantino scripts that were filmed by other directors such as True Romance and the controversial Natural Born Killers. Whilst exploring Taranti...
This guide to George Lucas includes categories such as casting, alternative versions, recurring themes and concerns and expert witness, information on Lucas's inspiration behind his films, both directing and producing - and accounts of his other lesser-known early films.
Chantal Akerman is widely acclaimed as one of the most original and important directors working in Europe today. A towering figure in women’s and feminist film-making, she has produced a diverse and intensely personal body of work ranging from minimalist portraits of the everyday to exuberant romantic comedies, and from documentaries and musicals to installation art. This book traces the director’s career at the crossroads between experimental and mainstream cinema, contextualising her work with...
The Big Lebowski is a razor-sharp comedy thriller of mistaken identity, gangsters, bowling, kidnapping, and money gone astray, written by the Coens, directed by Joel Coen, and produced by Ethan Coen. In addition to Jeff Bridges, whose portrayal of The Dude has become iconic, and John Goodman, his bowling buddy, the film stars Steve Buscemi, Julianne Moore, John Turturro, Willem Dafoe, Sam Elliot, and Ben Gazzara. Not given to talking publicly about their work, the Coens gave access to Tricia Coo...
The films of John Akomfrah represent one of the most significant bodies of artistic production in the post-war era in Britain, yet little attempt has been made to analyse the consistencies and divergences across them. James Harvey’s John Akomfrah is the first comprehensive analytic engagement with these films, offering sustained close engagement with the artist’s core thematic preoccupations and aesthetic tendencies. His analysis negotiates the contextual and theoretical layers of Akomfrah’s...
A masterclass on the art of directing from the Pulitzer Prize-winning (and Oscar and Tony-nominated) writer of Glengarry Glen Ross, Speed the Plow, The Verdict, and Wag the Dog Calling on his unique perspective as playwright, screenwriter, and director of his own critically acclaimed movies like House of Games, State and Main, and Things Change, David Mamet illuminates how a film comes to be. He looks at every aspect of directing—from script to cutting room—to show the many tasks directors und...
Stone: the Controversies, Excesses, and Exploits of a Radical Filmmaker
by James Riordan
WHAT MAKES A CULT FILMMAKER? Whether pioneering in their craft, fiercely and undeniably unique, or critically divisive, cult filmmakers come in all shapes and guises. Some gain instant fame, others instant notoriety, and more still remain anonymous until a chance change in fashion sees their work propelled into the limelight. In this nifty little book, Ian Haydn-Smith handpicks a selection of brilliant directors you should know – from industry heavyweights like Tim Burton and David Lynch, to...
The Moving Form of Film: Historicizing the Medium through Other Media charts the ways in which crossing borders between film and other arts and media can provide an encompassing, inclusive, and non-teleological understanding of film history. Evolutionary narratives of cinema have traditionally adopted the Second World War as a watershed that separates 'classical' Hollywood films from 'modern' European productions, a scheme that subjects the entire world to the cinematic history of two hegemonic...
Spanish filmmaker Carlos Saura, who began his career under the censorship of Franco's regime, has forged an international reputation for his unique cinematic treatment of emotional and spiritual responses to repressive political conditions. In films such as Carmen and El Dorado, where reality and fantasy are deliberately fused together, Saura reveals the illusions of Franco's mythologized Spain--a chaste, Catholic, and heroic Spain of the Golden Age--that tend to isolate Spaniards from the rest...
More than any other person, Jack C. Ellis notes, John Grierson, a Scot, was responsible for the documentary film as it has developed in English-speaking countries. While in the United States in the 1920s, Grierson first applied the term ""documentary"" to Robert Flaherty's ""Moana"". In 1927, Grierson returned to Britain, where he was hired to promote the marketing of products of the British Empire. The first practical application of Grierson's theory of documentary film was ""Drifters"", a 1929...
She has received numerous accolades including an Academy Award and two Golden Globes, and in 2004 became the first ever American woman to be nominated for a Best Director Oscar. From The Virgin Suicides to The Bling Ring, her work carves out new spaces for the expression of female subjectivity that embraces rather than rejects femininity. Fiona Handyside here considers the careful counter-balance of vulnerability with the possibilities and pleasures of being female in Coppola's films - albeit fo...
Boldly signifying the cultural issues of the 1960s and 1970s in groundbreaking pieces such as Grey Gardens, Gimme Shelter, and Showman, filmmakers and brothers David and Albert Maysles used an approach to documentary film that involved spontaneous observation of naturally occurring events. With no rehearsed footage and no preconceived plots, their revolutionary work eschewed the authoritative voice-over narrator, didactic scripts, and the traditional problem-and-solution format used by the major...