Best of
Film

1976

The Devil Finds Work


James Baldwin - 1976
    Bette Davis's eyes, Joan Crawford's bitchy elegance, Stepin Fetchit's stereotype, Sidney Poitier's superhuman black man...  These are the movie stars and the qualities that influenced James Baldwin...  and now become part of his incisive look at racism in American movies.Baldwin challenges the underlying assumptions in such films as In the Heat of the Night, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, and The Exorcist, offering us a vision of America's self-delusions and deceptions.  Here are our loves and hates, biases and cruelties, fears and ignorance reflected by the films that have entertained us and shaped our consciousness.  And here, too, is the stunning prose of a writer whose passion never diminished his struggle for equality, justice, and social change.From The Birth of a Nation to The Exorcist--one of America's most important writers turns his critical eye to American film.

Fellini On Fellini


Federico Fellini - 1976
    . . . The material interestingly helps clarify Fellini's film work, and his fans will enjoy this stimulating and intellectual 'biography.'"--Library JournalOne of the greatest Italian filmmakers, Federico Fellini (1920-1993) created such masterpieces as La Strada, La Dolce Vita, 8 1/2, Juliet of the Spirits, Satyricon, and Amarcord. His prodigious body of work evokes Pirandello, existentialism, "the silence of God," as well as show business. Critics have accused him of being a charlatan, hypocrite, clown, and demon, and have hailed him as a magician, poet, genius, and prophet. Fellini on Fellini is a fascinating collection of his articles, interviews, essays, reminiscences, and table talk, carefully arranged to chart the progress of his life and work. There are boyhood memories of his hometown, Remini, and his highly improbable beginnings as a scriptwriter for Rossellini; letters to Jesuit priests and Marxist critics defending his first international success, La Strada; anecdotes and revelations about the making of La Dolca Vita, 8 1/2, and The Clowns; and insights into all aspects of filmmaking. Here, Fellini reveals, as no one else can, a rich digest of his brilliant and controversial career.

Elia Kazan: A Life


Elia Kazan - 1976
    He reveals his working relationships with his many collaborators, including Harold Clurman, Lee Strasberg, Clifford Odets, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando, James Dean, John Steinbeck and Darryl Zanuck, and describes his directing "style" as he sees it, in terms of position, movement, pace, rhythm and his own limitations. Kazan also retraces his own decision to inform for the House Un-American Activities Committee, illuminating much of what may be obscured in McCarthy literature.

Step Right Up!: I'm Gonna Scare The Pants Off America


William Castle - 1976
    Here are the outrageous memoirs of an American original whose life was every bit as outlandish as his movies. Photographs. Filmography.

The MGM Story: the complete history of fifty roaring years


John Douglas Eames - 1976
    Year by year every film is appraised alongside a still from the movie.

The Art of Alfred Hitchcock: Fifty Years of His Motion Pictures


Donald Spoto - 1976
    This completely revised and updated edition of the classic text describes and analyzes every movie made by master filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock.

Grammar of the Film Language


Daniel Arijon - 1976
    This "language" is basic to the very positioning and moving of players and cameras, as well as the sequencing and pacing of images. It does not date as new technologies alter the means of capturing images on film and tape. Basic to the very scripting of a scene or planning of a shoot Arijon's visual narrative formulas will enlighten anyone involved in the film industry -- including producers, directors, writers and animators etc.

Hollywood Glamor Portraits


John Kobal - 1976
    Portraits do not duplicate those found in Kobal's Movie Star Portraits. Introduction. Captions.

The Westmores of Hollywood


Frank Westmore - 1976
    Here is the story of a remarkable dynasty of makeup geniuses that managed to achieve incredible makeup effects for decades.

Hollywood Costume Design


David Chierichetti - 1976
    Here is every motion picture studio- MGM, Paramount, Warner Brothers, Fox, RKO, Columbia, Universal, United Artists and the independents-the men who ran them, he stars who describe in their own words what is was like to work for the great Hollywood dream machine.

Durgnat on Film


Raymond Durgnat - 1976
    

Clear the Decks!


Daniel V. Gallery - 1976
    Contains Epilogue mentioning Vietnam (1967).

Experimental Animation: An Illustrated Anthology


Robert Russett - 1976
    It brings together over 50 interviews and first-person accounts that describe the work of 38 innovative artist-filmmakers. Such pioneers as Alexander Alexeieff and Claire Parker, Hans Richter, Vicking Eggerling, and Oskkar Fishinger are alongside the recent avant-garde of Robert Breer, Harry Smith, Stan VanDer Beek, Peter Foldes, and Ed Emschweiller. With nearly 300 illustrations, a filmography, a glossary of technical terms, and a list of distributors, this is the first important sourcebook for an emerging art.

Marguerite Duras


Marguerite Duras - 1976
    The mystery that surrounds her characters - Anne Marie Stretter, the Vice-Consul, the beggar woman of Savannahket, Lol V. Stein - is not dispelled, but as they appear and reappear in book, script, and film, we began to understand their strange seduction.With 'India Song' (her shooting script and working notes are included in this book), Marguerite Duras broke new ground. Critical essays and appreciations by renowned French thinkers explore the ways this and her other works have generated new possibilities in writing and image-making at a critical juncture in Western representation.

Directing the Film: Film Directors Art


Eric Sherman - 1976
    Film-making wisdom and a fascinating mine of film lore make this a priceless resource for students, aspiring film professionals, and film fans.

Put Money in Thy Purse: The Filming of Orson Welles' Othello


Micheál MacLiammóir - 1976
    

Josh: My Up and Down, In and Out Life


Joshua Logan - 1976
    

Anais Nin Observed: From a Film Portrait of a Woman as Artist


Robert Snyder - 1976
    

Movies and Methods: Vol. II


Bill Nichols - 1976
    Now there is again ferment in the field. Movies and Methods, Volume II, captures the developments that have given history and genre studies imaginative new models and indicates how feminist, structuralist, and psychoanalytic approaches to film have achieved fresh, valuable insights. In his thoughtful introduction, Nichols provides a context for the paradoxes that confront film studies today. He shows how shared methods and approaches continue to stimulate much of the best writing about film, points to common problems most critics and theorists have tried to resolve, and describes the internal contraditions that have restricted the usefulness of post-structuralism. Mini-introductions place each essay in a larger context and suggest its linkages with other essays in the volume. A great variety of approaches and methods characterize film writing today, and the final part conveys their diversity—from statistical style analysis to phenomenology and from gay criticisms to neoformalism. This concluding part also shows how the rigorous use of a broad range of approaches has helped remove post-structuralist criticism from its position of dominance through most of the seventies and early eighties. The writings collected in this volume exhibit not only a strong sense of personal engagement but als a persistent awareness of the social importance of the cinema in our culture. Movies and Methods, Volume II, will prove as invaluable to the serious student of cinema as its predecessor; it will be an essential reference work for years to come.

The Fleischer Story


Leslie Cabarga - 1976
    Creators of Betty Boop, Koko the Clown, and the Bouncing Ball, they also brought Popeye the Sailor Man to the screen and produced the first feature-length animated cartoon—on the theory of relativity! Max invented the Rotoscope and for a while the brothers kept pace with Disney in performance and profit. But after 1942 the studio closed and their films vanished. What happened and how they developed are examined for the first time in this work—for many years out of print and a collector's item. It is here, updated and enlarged with hundreds of sketches and storyboard layouts where these classic cartoons can once again receive the attention and adulation they deserve.

The Horror People


John Brosnan - 1976
    A comprehensive study of the horror-movie genre.

The Technique of Film Animation


John Halas - 1976
    

Film: the Democratic Art


Garth S. Jowett - 1976
    

The Beginnings of the Cinema in England


John Barnes - 1976
    

History of the American Avant-Garde Cinema


Marilyn Singer - 1976
    

The American Film Industry


Tino Balio - 1976
    Now this indispensible anthology has been expanded and revised to include a fresh introductory overview by editor Tino Balio and ten new chapters that explore such topics as the growth of exhibition as big business, the mode of production for feature films, the star as market strategy, and the changing economics and structure of contemporary entertainment companies. The result is a unique collection of essays, more comprehensive and current than ever, that reveals how the American movie industry really worked in a century of constant change-from kinetoscopes and the coming of sound to the star system, 1950s blacklisting, and today's corporate empires.