Ingmar Bergman
Although Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007) holds an undisputed place in the pantheon of major filmmakers, mention of his name unjustly evokes images of monolithic gloom and despair. All of his pictures, including his comedies, deal seriously with faith, morality, and mortality, but audiences and critics too often neglect the extraordinary wit and vitality that can be found in Wild Strawberries, Scenes from a Marriage, Fanny and Alexander, and many others. In Ingmar Bergman: Interviews, the director dis...
Billy Wilder (USA, 1906-2002) is an undisputed master of American comedy, taking situation comedy to the edge of the absurd in Some Like it Hot (1959). But he also made pessimistic melodramas such as Sunset Boulevard (1950), in which Gloria Swanson gives a moving performance as a fallen star, and a few fine examples of film noir, such as Double Indemnity (1944) et Witness for the Prosecution (1957). Wilder worked with the greatest stars and his filmography is studded with classic scenes, includi...
In August 1958, the opening scenes of a low-budget black and white film flickered onto cinema screens up and down the country. No one could have foreseen what impact Carry on Sergeant would have then and in the future. Not only did it become one of the top three grossing films for that year, it also kick started the longest running and most successful comedy series of all time.Here, for the very first time, is the essential biography of this most treasured institution in the world of British cin...
Here is the autobiography of the little boy with golden curls in the paintings of his father, Pierre Auguste Renoir,the boy who became the director many consider the greatest in history. Francois Truffaut called him an infallible filmmaker . . . Renoir has succeeded in creating the most alive films in the history of cinema, films which still breathe forty years after they were made." In this book, Jean Renoir (1894-1979)presents his world, from his father's Montemarte studio to his own travels...
Gendered Frames, Embodied Cameras: Varda, Akerman, Cabrera, Calle, and Maïwenn is the first book to link these five filmmakers together through an analysis of the relationship between filming one’s own body and the creative body. Through engaged artistic practices, these female filmmakers turn the camera to their bodies as a way to show the process of artistic creation and to produce themselves as filmmakers and artists in their work from 1987–2009. By making visible their bodies, they offer a w...
Known as the 'Georgian Socrates' of Soviet philosophy, Merab Mamardashvili was a defining personality of the late-Soviet intelligentsia. In the 1970s and 1980s, he taught required courses in philosophy at Russia's two leading film schools, helping to educate a generation of internationally prolific directors. Exploring Mamardashvili's extensive philosophical output, as well as a range of recent Russian films, Alyssa DeBlasio reveals the intellectual affinities amongst directors of the Mamardashv...
Refocus: the Films of Michel Gondry (Refocus: The International Directors)
The acclaimed French auteur behind the mind-bending modern classic Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), for which he won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, Michel Gondry has directed a number of innovative, ground-breaking films and documentaries, episodes of the acclaimed television show Kidding and some of the most influential music videos in the history of the medium. In this collection, a range of international scholars offers a comprehensive study of this significant an...
The Films of Elias Querejeta: A Producer of Landscapes is the first book in English to explore the career of Spain's most important producer. Through their recurring emphasis on landscape, his films have consistently documented a country in the grip of modernization from the 1960s to the present day. In particular, this book investigates the ways in which landscape in his productions can be understood as a site of political struggle against Francoism and Spain's embrace of neoliberal capitalism....
Contemporary North American Film Directors (Wallflower Critical Guides S.) (The Wallflower Critical Guides to Contemporary Film Directors (CUP))
For investing movies with an image of style and glamour George Cukor (1899--1983) is considered one of the founding fathers of the Golden Age of Hollywood. The roll call of the great films he made and the stars he directed validates his rank as one of cinema's greatest moviemakers. ""The only really important thing I have to say about George Cukor,"" Katharine Hepburn proclaimed, ""is that all the other directors I have worked with starred themselves. But George 'starred' the actor. He didn't...
On Sunset Boulevard, originally published in 1998, describes the life of acclaimed filmmaker Billy Wilder (1906–2002), director of such classicsas Sunset Boulevard, The Lost Weekend, The Seven Year Itch, and Sabrina. This definitive biography takes the reader on a fast-paced journey fromBilly Wilder’s birth outside of Krakow in 1906 to Vienna, where he grew up, to Berlin, where he moved as a young man while establishing himself as a journalist and screenwriter, and triumphantly to Hollywood, whe...
Robert Altman
Robert Altman is one of the most inventive, unpredictable, and hotly debated American filmmakers of the past thirty years. His movies include popular hits (M.A.S.H., Nashville), critical successes (Thieves Like Us, The Long Goodbye, Short Cuts), and outright disasters (Beyond Therapy). Through triumph and tribulation alike, Altman has never lost the experimental spirit that brought him into feature filmmaking after twenty years of refining his talent on industrial movies and TV episodes. He also...
Billy Wilder
Always daring Hollywood censors' limits on content, Billy Wilder directed greats such as Marilyn Monroe, Jack Lemmon, Ginger Rogers, Marlene Dietrich, Kirk Douglas, Audrey Hepburn, and Gary Cooper. Billy Wilder: Interviews follows the filmmaking career of one of Hollywood's most honored and successful writer-directors and spans over fifty years. Wilder, born in 1906, fled from Nazi Germany and established himself in America. Starting with a celebrated 1944 Life magazine profile, the book traces...
The imagination of Walt Disney (1901-1966) is still seen in theme parks throughout the world bearing his name, on numerous live-action films and television specials, on toys and assorted merchandise, and on an international corporation known both for the high quality of its creative output and its ubiquity. Walt Disney: Conversations collects interviews and profiles of the man who created Mickey Mouse, and produced such full-length animated classics as Snow White, Cinderella, Fantasia, Bambi, T...
David Lean (Conversations with Filmmakers)
Along with Michael Powell and Alfred Hitchcock, David Lean (1908-1991) is one of the most significant British filmmakers to emerge from the first half of the twentieth century. His use of panoramic landscapes, precision editing, grandiose compositions, and epic themes--as epitomized in his classics Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago--have influenced Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, and numerous other directors. Lean's films encompass a wide range of styles and genres: quiet, p...
Atom Egoyan (Conversations with Filmmakers)
Four-time winner at the Cannes Film Festival, Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan (b. 1960) began his career while still an undergraduate at the University of Toronto. His first love was playwriting, but he began to see that he could investigate themes emotionally through film- that the camera could play a role. He learned his craft in his own independent films and by directing television episodes before attempting his first feature film, Next of Kin (1984). There he explored the themes of family and...
Michelangelo Antonioni
In the 1960s and 1970s, Michelangelo Antonioni (1912-2007) forged a cinematic language that reflected a changed, postwar world. His early successes, including L'avventura (1960) and La notte (1961), reshaped film drama by focusing so intently on characters (particularly couples) that plot was often a secondary concern. He also moved away from the social realism of his Italian peers. His most notable English-language films, from Blow Up (1966) to Zabriskie Point (1970), engage contemporary politi...
Sam Peckinpah
Sam Peckinpah (1925-1984), an accomplished writer and director of television westerns, did not attract media attention until the release of his second feature-length film, the award-winning Ride the High Country. Peckinpah revealed in early interviews his deep knowledge of film history, an uncompromising aesthetic, and an intolerance for any crew members who did not share his capacity for hard work. As his career progressed, he began having increasingly difficult times with producers who did not...
México fotografiado por Luis Buñuel
by INSTITUTO DE LA CINEMATOGRAFíA