Best of
Film

1980

Annie Hall: Screenplay


Woody Allen - 1980
    One of a hand-picked selection of some of the most popular and cult-worthy titles on Faber and Faber's extensive list of film scripts.

Kubrick: The Definitive Edition


Michel Ciment - 1980
    If Stanley Kubrick had made only" 2001: A Space Odyssey" or "Dr. Strangelove," his cinematic legacy would have been assured. But from his first feature film, "Fear and Desire," to the posthumously released "Eyes Wide Shut," Kubrick created an accomplished body of work unique in its scope, diversity, and artistry, and by turns both lauded and controversial.In this newly revised and definitive edition of his now classic study, film critic Michel Ciment provides an insightful examination of Kubrick's thirteen films--including such favorites as "Lolita, A Clockwork Orange," and "Full Metal Jacket-"-alongside an assemblage of more than four hundred photographs that form a complementary photo essay. Rounding out this unique work are a short biography of Kubrick; interviews with the director, as well as cast and crew members, including Malcolm McDowell, Shelley Duvall, and Jack Nicholson; and a detailed filmography and bibliography. Meshed with masterful integrity, the book's text and illustrations pay homage to one of the most visionary, original, and demanding filmmakers of our time.

Swanson on Swanson


Gloria Swanson - 1980
    Worshipped by the world's most dynamic men on screen, and off, and adored by no less than six husbands, directed by such powerhouses as Chaplin, DeMille, Stroheim, Billy Wilder, she surrendered her will to no man. Offered a million-plus tax free dollars by Paramount, she defied the studio to become her own boss. Surviving scandal, disaster, near-death and the collapse of that wonderland called Hollywood - alive, extraordinary, triumphant - this is Gloria Swanson!

Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons; Revised and Updated


Leonard Maltin - 1980
    This definitive history of American animated cartoons also brings Maltin's many fans up to date on the work being done today at the Walt Disney and Warner Bros. studios, and other developments in the world of animation.Drawing on colorful interviews with many of the American cartoon industry's principals, Maltin has come up with a gold mine of anecdotes and film history. Behind the scenes were genius animators and entrepreneurs such as Walt Disney, Chuck Jones, Tex Avery, Mel Blanc, and a legion of others, In all, Malitn has put together a glorious celebration of a universally loved segment of Americana.Includes the most extensive filmography on cartoons ever compiled, and sources for video rental.

David O. Selznick's Hollywood


Ronald Haver - 1980
    Selznick’s Hollywood is less a coffee-table book than a coffee table without legs. Its credits ape a blockbuster movie’s: ‘Executive Producer: Robert Gottlieb – Associate Producer: Martha Kaplan’, etc; and its first page opens like cinema curtains on a wider-than-Panavision main title modelled on Gone with the Wind. A good half of the book is pictorial – playbills, posters, designers’ sketches, views of Hollywood, facsimiles of memoranda and old newspapers, publicity stills and frame enlargements, pages of shots from David Selznick films. All it lacks is a disc in the binding with a score by Dimitri Tiomkin.And yet, despite the hype, the book repays the muscular effort of reading it. (Stonemasons’ Weekly: ‘I found this book hard to lay down.’) Selznick’s progress – through Paramount, RKO and MGM to independent production and post-war decline – makes his career emblematic. Recounting it, Ronald Haver chronicles Hollywood’s tarnished golden age, teeming with cut-throat movie moguls, touchy stars, voluptuous ‘discoveries’, toxic columnists, frenzied press-agents, writers in gilded cages, directors on assembly-lines. It’s the world of Garson Kanin’s artful factoid novel, Moviola – a glittering kitsch dream-world of overblown extravagance, ruthlessness, sentimentality and greed.

Conversations with Joan Crawford


Roy Newquist - 1980
    Joan Crawford was a tough, no-nonsense, tell-it-like-it-is (and if you didn't like it, then tough!) lady. In this entertaining book she is interviewed by veteran Hollywood interviewer, Roy Newquist and he asks some tough questions and gets some tougher answers. You will be surprised how volatile she could become when Newquist asks sensitive questions such as: her alleged "Porno" movie, her treatment of her children, husbands, affairs and other private issues, to Newquist's credit he doesn't back down. Great book, but BEWARE JOAN GIVES NO SPIN HERE, THIS IS THE WORLD ACCORDING TO JOAN

An Open Book


John Huston - 1980
    Huston shows a master screenwriter's skill in setting a scene and delineating a character with a few words."--New York Times Book ReviewIn An Open Book, this veteran of five marriages, innumerable friendships, practical jokes, horses, love affairs, and intellectual obsessions tells his own story in his own way. It is direct, unadorned, complete-and wonderful reading. Here is Huston on stage for the first time at age three, dressed in an Uncle Sam suit; in the ring at eighteen, boxing for small purses; selling his first short story to H.L. Mencken; down and out in London; acting in Greenwich Village; going to Hollywood to work for Jack Warner as a writer; directing his first picture, The Maltese Falcon; filming dangerous combat scenes in the Aleutians and in Italy; and making over forty years worth of movies, from Key Largo to The Man Who Would Be King. And the stories behind those movies are often as exciting as the movies themselves, featuring such notables as Hemingway, Selznick, Sartre, Hepburn, Monroe, Flynn, Welles, Gable, Bogart, Clift, and Brando. An Open Book is alive with John Huston's presence: his boldness and daring, his candor and style, and the spontaneity with which he followed his dreams to their ultimate destination, the well-deserved acclaim of a world enchanted by his work.

Cinema: A Critical Dictionary (2 volume set)


Richard Roud - 1980
    Critics and film historians discuss the work, significance, and contributions of directors and filmmakers from around the world and since the advent of the motion picture

The Art of the Great Hollywood Portrait Photographers


John Kobal - 1980
    Must have for connoisseur's of B&W portrait photography and fans of Hollywood history.

Film-Star Portraits of the Fifties: 163 Glamor Photos


John Kobal - 1980
    Includes 114 major stars in their Hollywood heyday: Marlon Brando, James Dean, Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, Marlene Dietrich, Kirk Douglas, William Holden, and dozens more. Also includes stills for A Streetcar Named Desire, The Misfits, and many more.

Peckinpah: THE WESTERN FILMS--A RECONSIDERATION


Paul Seydor - 1980
    The book helped lead a generation of readers and filmgoers to a full and enduring appreciation of Peckinpah's landmark films, locating his work in the central tradition of American art that goes all the way back to Emerson, Hawthorne, and Melville. In addition to a new section on the personal significance of The Wild Bunch to Peckinpah, Seydor has added to this expanded, revised edition a complete account of the successful, but troubled, efforts to get a fully authorized director's cut released. He describes how an initial NC-17 rating of the film by the Motion Picture Association of America's ratings board nearly aborted the entire project. He also adds a great wealth of newly discovered biographical detail that has surfaced since the director's death and includes a new chapter on Noon Wine, credited with bringing Peckinpah's television work to a fitting resolution and preparing his way for The Wild Bunch. This edition stands alone in offering full treatment of all versions of Peckinpah's Westerns. It also includes discussion of all fourteen episodes of Peckinpah's television series, The Westerner, and a full description of the versions of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid now (or formerly) in circulation, including an argument that the label "director's cut" on the version in release by Turner is misleading. Additionally, the book's final chapter has been substantially rewritten and now includes new information about Peckinpah's background and sources.

The Empire Strikes Back Notebook


Diana Attias - 1980
    Containing the dialogue and stage directions from the film, the script will take you - again and again - into the thrilling world of the space fantasy.Magnificently illustrating the script are beautiful selected storyboards - some of the essential tools used in visualizing the fabulous STAR WARS episode. Quotes by director Irvin Kershner and scriptwriter Lawrence Kasdan serve to further illuminate aspects of creating this complex film adventure. In addition, a fascinating foreword by Irvin Kershner describes how he combined storyboard with script as part of the filmmaking process involved in realizing the dazzling space story, THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK.

Apparatus, Cinematographic Apparatus: Selected Writings


Theresa Hak Kyung ChaJean-Marie Straub - 1980
    The intention is to identify the individual components and complete film apparatus, the interdependent operations comprising the "film, the author of the film, the spectator."The selection of works was made to approach the subject from theoretical directions synchronously with work of filmmakers who address and incorporate the apparatus—the function of film, the film's author, the effects produced on the viewer while viewing film—as an integral part of their work, and to turn backwards and call upon the machinery that creates the impression of reality whose function, inherent in its very medium, is to conceal from its spectator the relationship of the viewer/subject to the work being viewed.

My Story


Ingrid Bergman - 1980
    The book describes her relationships with the characters she knew and worked with, including Selznick, Garbo, Bogart, Gary Cooper and Ingmar Bergman. Above all, she reveals the story of her personal life - her childhood in Sweden, her marriages (including her dramatic and controversial elopement with Roberto Rossellini), and, in more recent years, her battle against cancer. She died in 1982.

The Official Rocky Horror Picture Show Movie Novel


Richard J. Anobile - 1980
    

Films of Bela Lugosi


Richard Bojarski - 1980
    So not surprisingly one of his most famous roles was Dracula in Tod Browning's 1931 adaption. This autobiography looks at the cinema's most brilliant villan in a record of his career, from his days as a romantic lead and Shakespearean star in native Hungary to his stage and screen triumph as Dracula and through the nearly 80 features which followed.

Jean Renoir: The French Films, 1924-1939


Alexander Sesonske - 1980
    Describes all of Renoir's French films from the well-known Grand Illusion, to the seldom-seen Chotard et Cie, analyzing in detail the characters, actors, plots, direction, and editing of each film.

Western Films


Brian Garfield - 1980
    This guide to Western films from Abilene Town to Zanny Bride lists credits and ranks the great figures—John Ford, Clint Eastwood, John Wayne, Howard Hawks—who shaped this influential genre.

Introduction to a True History of Cinema and Television


Jean-Luc Godard - 1980
    These talks, published in French in 1980 and long out of print, have never before been translated into English. For this edition, the faulty and incomplete French transcription has been entirely revised and corrected, working from the sole videotape copies of the lectures, housed in the Concordia University archives.For this project, Godard screened for a dozen or so students his own famous films of the 1960s—watching them himself for the first time since their production—alongside single reels of some of the films which most influenced his work (by Eisenstein, Dreyer, Rossellini, the American directors of the 1950s and many others). Working at the dawn of the video age, a technology which was to be essential to his completion of the project many years later, as the visual essay Histoire(s) du cinéma, Godard used pieces of 35mm film, projected in an auditorium, to approximate the historical montage he was groping towards. He then held forth, in an experience he describes as a form of ‘public self-psychoanalysis’, on his personal and professional relationships (with François Truffaut, Anna Karina, Raoul Coutard, film producers and audiences), working methods, aesthetic preferences, political beliefs and, on the cusp of 50, his philosophy of life.The result is the most extensive and revealing account ever of his work and critical opinions. Never has Godard been as loquacious, lucid and disarmingly frank as he is here. This volume is certain to become one of the great classics of film literature, by perhaps the wittiest and most idiosyncratic genius cinema has known.Readers familiar with the Histoire(s) du cinéma video project, famous for its enigmatic juxtapositions of fragments of texts and images, will find some of the same works discussed here, providing an invaluable key to the meaning of Godard’s later collages.Two editions of the book will be printed: a sewn-binding, cloth-covered library edition and a sewn-binding paperback with a thick (15 pt.) card cover that will not curl. Only the best-quality printing and binding materials and techniques are being used to create a handsome and durable volume in either edition. This will be one of the most attractive and well-made books you own. The book is 558 pages, with 150,000 words from Godard’s talks, 30,000 words of commentary and 80 full-page illustrations, twenty-four of which are in Godard’s hand and the rest film stills he manipulated with a photocopier for the original edition of the book.As a bonus, with every on-line purchase of the book a volume in caboose's new series Kino Agora will be given away free of charge. A new title in the series will be introduced every few months throughout 2012 and 2013 and shipped with the Godard. Kino-Agora titles are also available as e-books from Amazon and Apple.

The Making of James Clavell's "Shōgun"


James Clavell - 1980
    

Caligari's Children: The Film As Tale Of Terror


S.S. Prawer - 1980
    S. Prawer in his concise and penetrating study of the horror film--from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Frankenstein, to Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Omen. After a brief history of the horror genre in film, Prawer offers detailed analyses of specific sequences from various films, such as Murnau's Nosferatu. He discusses continuities between literary and cinematic tales, and shows what happens when one is transformed into the other. Unpatronizing and scholarly, Prawer draws on a wide range of sources in order to better situate a genre that is both enormously popular with contemporary audiences and of increasing critical importance.

The Asphalt Jungle: A Screenplay


Ben Maddow - 1980
    R. Bur­nett's Little Caesarand High Sierra. The choice of Ben Maddow and John Huston as screenwriters assured the artistic success of the screenplay, for few writer/directors could have matched Huston's ability to develop these characters cine­matically. It was a case of strength building upon strength. Burnett's fully devel­oped characters were transformed by Maddow and Huston into a screenplay of impressive immediacy. Indeed the portrayal of the criminals in splendid performances from Louis Calhern, Sam Jaffe, Sterling Hayden, James Whitmore, and Jean Hagen, led Bosley Crow­ther to lament, "If only it all weren't so corrupt!" But the characters of Bur­nett, Maddow and Huston don't permit us to romanticize about them or their activities. We share their professional pride in a robbery well planned and are silent accomplices to their mutual treachery. The Asphalt Jungle was nominated for best screenplay by the Motion Picture Academy and for best-written American drama by the Writers Guild. John Hus­ton received a nomination for best direc­tor by the Academy. As a novel, The Asphalt Jungle has been translated into twelve languages.

Paramount Pictures and the People Who Made Them


I.G. Edmonds - 1980
    

Forgotten Films to Remember: And a Brief History of Fifty Years of the American Talking Picture


John Springer - 1980
    This book looks at over 300 of these films, including Passport to Pimlico, Nightmare Alley and The Big Heat.

The Films of Myrna Loy


Lawrence J. Quirk - 1980
    Book by Quirk, Lawrence J.

French Impressionist Cinema: Film Culture, Film Theory, And Film Style


David Bordwell - 1980
    

The Films of the Sixties


Douglas Brode - 1980