Throughout these pages Meisner is delight--always empathizing with his students and urging them onward, provoking emotion, laughter, and growing technical mastery from his charges. With an introduction by Sydney Pollack, director of "Out of Africa" and "Tootsie," who worked with Meisner for five years."This book should be read by anyone who wants to act or even appreciate what acting involves. Like Meisner's way of teaching, it is the straight goods."--Arthur Miller"If there is a key to good acting, this one is it, above all others. Actors, young and not so young, will find inspiration and excitement in this book."--Gregory Peck

    . . . At the editing table, when I run the strip of film through, frame by frame, I still feel that dizzy sense of magic of my childhood.” Bergman, who has conveyed this heady sense of wonder and vision to moviegoers for decades, traces his lifelong love affair with film in his breathtakingly visual autobiography, The Magic Lantern.More grand mosaic than linear account, Bergman’s vignettes trace his life from a rural Swedish childhood through his work in theater to Hollywood’s golden age, and a tumultuous romantic history that includes five wives and more than a few mistresses. Throughout, Bergman recounts his life in a series of deeply personal flashbacks that document some of the most important moments in twentieth-century filmmaking as well as the private obsessions of the man behind them. Ambitious in scope yet sensitively wrought, The Magic Lantern is a window to the mind of one of our era’s great geniuses.“[Bergman] has found a way to show the soul’s landscape . . . . Many gripping revelations.”—New York Times Book Review“Joan Tate’s translation of this book has delicacy and true pitch . . . The Magic Lantern is as personal and penetrating as a Bergman film, wry, shadowy, austere.”—New Republic“[Bergman] keeps returning to his past, reassessing it, distilling its meaning, offering it to his audiences in dazzling new shapes.”—New York Times“What Bergman does relate, particularly his tangled relationships with his parents, is not only illuminating but quite moving. No ‘tell-all’ book this one, but revealing in ways that much longer and allegedly ‘franker’ books are not.”—Library Journal

    She tells of the friendships she made with many of her leading men and with women such as Joan Crawford whom she met as a youngster in a chorus line and Eleanor Roosevelt, whose President husband had a well-known crush on Myrna. Myrna Loy was not only an actress but also a woman who had political interests, championing the UN and Democratic presidential candidates from Truman onward, and was even for a time a "Washington wife". In her memoirs she presents a personal analysis of post-war politics up to and including Ronald Reagan.

    You will learn how to research and focus a documentary film or video idea, develop a crew, direct the crew, maintain control during shooting, and oversee postproduction. Practical work is emphasized, with dozens of exercises and questionnaires to help focus your ideas and give you hands-on practice. The documentary is treated as an important genre in its own right, as well as a useful prelude to directing feature films. The fourth edition is a significant update. The book's emphasis has always been on concrete steps you can take to become a documentary filmmaker, and there are loads of new projects to help, along with assessment tables that allow you to gauge your progress. In addition, there is new material on location sound, the reality TV trend, top documentaries to see, and more.

    Slangy, playful, and "powerfully, glamorously in love with love," the films that followed were unique in their combination of swank and slapstick. Here are the directors—Lubitsch (Trouble in Paradise), Capra (It Happened One Night), Hawks (Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday), McCarey (The Awful Truth), La Cava (My Man Godfrey, Stage Door), Sturges (The Lady Eve, The Palm Beach Story, The Miracle at Morgan's Creek)—and their stars—Carole Lombard, Irene Dunne, Cary Grant, Fred Astaire, Clark Gable, Barbara Stanwyck, William Powell, Myrna Loy, among others—all described and analyzed in one comprehensive and delightful volume.

    Many films later, he still works outside the studio system and guides every phase of his productions.Now Sayles has written an illuminating book about the complex choices that lie at the heart of every movie. Using the making of his film Matewan as an example, he offers chapters on screenwriting, directing, editing, sound, and more. Photographs, sketches, and the complete shooting script illustrate this engaging account of how Sayles's curiosity about a coal miners' strike in the town of Matewan, West Virginia, became a screenplay--and then a movie.

    Shot on a shoe-string budget of $175,000 in black-and-white 16mm, the film was made with Spike Lee's persistence and talent plus the help of family and friends. It grossed $8 million at the box office and proved to be a major hit with both critics and audiences. Now Spike Lee reveals how he did it, mapping out the entire creative and production processes-from early notebook jottings to film festival awards. Spike Lee's Gotta Have It is a unique document in film literature - it's funny, absorbing, and fresh as the hit film itself.

    All efforts failed. In 1977, producers approached multiple award winning Harlan Ellison to take a crack at this 'impossible' project. He accepted, and produced an astonishing screenplay that Asimov felt would be 'The first really adult, complex, worthwhile science fiction movie ever made.' That screenplay is presented here in book format, brought to scintillating life by the illustrations of artist Mark Zug. After you read it, then decide: Is this not the greatest science fiction movie never made?

    The first cinematic genius, D.W. Griffith, turned for his greatest themes to the Civil War, the French Revolution and ancient Babylon. Then came the era of Cecil B. De Mille's extravaganzas, drawing on the Bible, the 'wickedness' of ancient Rome, and early America. The L.A. County Museum of Art possesses by far the most important collection of costumes made for Hollywood films. In addition, its archives hold an enormous assortment of designers' costume sketches from all the movie studios, as well as a treasure-house of stills. In this absorbing volume, Edward Maeder, Curator of Costumes and Textiles at the Museum, examines the social and economic conditions reflected in the changing tastes of the cinema. Alicia Annas contributes a section on make-up and hairstyles; and Satch LaValley writes about the historical film and retail fashion. With an extensive filmography which describes the costumes in hundreds of period films, and with nearly 300 illustrations, this book offers an unparalleled record of this endlessly fascinating phenomenon. It will prove invaluable not only to film buffs but also to costume designers, social historians and anyone interested in the history of film.

    Lavishly illustrated with stills from movies famous and obscure, SCREEN DECO appeals to the film historian as well as anyone interested in the rise of High Style Deco. Chapters cover, among other topics, the design of musicals, ocean liners, and futurist cinematic epics. The final chapter presents portraits of the stars who personified the Deco "look."

    This text brings together the director's insights on his own life and work and illustrates them with personal documents. Also included is a complete chronological biography, filmography and bibliography.

    Included are chapters on the three "zombie" movies, plus Martin, Knightriders and Creepshow (which began Romero's association with Stephen King). There is also a rare look at Romero's earlier obscure films and a special section on Tales From the Darkside, plus plots of all his films.

    Contains never-before-published illustrations and the entire script.

    This book is a representative volume of Ritwik Ghatak's writings on cinema.These articles were originally written in English.In addition to the text the book offers an exhaustive filmography, production stills and details of his involvement with IPTA, as well as a list of his written works.

    On the surface, Wong follows the rules, presenting the usual fare of car chases, explosions, and sex, but in reality his films are much deeper. His characters live and die on the fringe of acceptance and existence, in a nebulous gray area between good and almost evil. Wong has managed to invent an art that refuses the affluence of the West: by sticking his guns (and knives, fists and chains), this film director has created a bridge between Hong Kong and the rest of the world.

    'Masters of Starlight" is a rich volume that commemorates both the still photographers - those silent dream weavers - and the brilliance of the Hollywood stars themselves.

    

    This edition will feature reviews of the most interesting films of the last twenty years, including more than a hundred new reviews.

    Illustrated with movie stills.

    

    Louis) examines how anti-Semitism and Nazi persecution have been treated in films, The Diary of Anne Frank in post-war America, the effect of 1960s-1979s social upheaval on such movies, and issues of historical representation and memory. Includes photos, a filmography, and acknowledgments for the 1987 edition. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

    

    It is a rare tribute book to Barbara Stanwyck's career, from when she received the 15th Annual American Film Institute Life Archievement Award April 9, 1987.

    OCTOBER: The First Decade brings together a selection of some of the most important and representative texts, many from issues long out of print, that have appeared in one of the foremost journals in art criticism and theory.

    They are important not only because they illustrate a story of business success, but because it is the story of the development of the modern American film industry. It was United Artists that changed the industry from one relying on the old studio system of the “golden age” into today’s modern system of independent production and distribution. Tino Balio’s vivid history will be important reading for anyone interested in the American film industry.

    

    

    

    

    Discusses her years at Twentieth-Century Fox, where she made twenty-one of her thirty films and traces her career from 1948 to 1962.

    Yet, as Peter Brunette attempts to prove in this, the first full-length study of his film career, Rossellini is perhaps the greatest unknown director who ever lived. Andrew Sarris has accorded him the top position in the Italian cinema. And Vincent Canby claims that when the history of the cinema's first hundred years is recollected in tranquility...Rossellini's films will be seen as theseminal works of what...can be called the New Movie. The precursor of such filmmakers as Michelangelo Antonioni and Jean-Luc Godard, whose films were popular during the 1960s, Rossellini was a man before his time. Often called the father of neo-realism, he began making starkly realistic films just after World War II. The films he made duringthis period--including Open City and Paisan--received wide critical attention and catapulted him from obscurity to international fame. Rossellini next turned his attention to the individual, lost in post-war alienation, and made films which, given his reputation for realism, were surprisingexpressionistic. The culmination of this phase were the films made with Ingrid Bergman--notably Stromboli, Europa 51, and Voyage to Italy--failuresin Hollywood's eyes yet, as Brunette argues, perhaps his greatest achievements. There followed a spate of overtly commercial films and, finally, thebrilliant and courageous made-for-television series documenting epics in human history. With this book, Brunette brings to American filmgoers an appreciative critical study of a great Italian film director. He considers each film separately, proceeding chronologically--from his so-called fascist films to his lengthy epic series--and employing post-structuralist and otheranalytic techniques to point up the films' technical innovations and subtle messages. Brunette looks not only at the films themselves, but at the mind behind the films and incorporates into his study the numerous intellectual debates spawned by Rossellini's works. Based on 7 years' research, duringwhich the author viewed all the existing Rossellini films, interviewed members of the director's family, and read an enormous body of European and American criticism, and more than 50 interviews in which Rossellini talks about his work, this is a landmark book--the first in any language to studyRoberto Rossellini's entire film caree

    It began in 1938, when producer David O. Selznick agreed to bring director Alfred Hitchcock from England, where he was already gaining widespread acclaim for his "little thrillers," and the collaboration resulted in the making of such masterpieces as Rebecca, Spellbound, and Notorious.Hitchcock was soft-spoken and meticulous; Selznick was confrontational and chronically disorganized. They were, moreover, two geniuses with wholly different approaches to filmmaking. The sparks that flew between them over the next eight years ignited into some of Hitchcock's most memorable achievements, but they made collaboration impossible in the end. Drawing on unpublished documents, early drafts of script treatments, and humorous production anecdotes—and including a wealth of previously unseen photographs—Leonard Leff has written a book for specialist and layman alike, a fascinating behind-the-scenes portrait not only of two great Hollywood figures but of the film industry itself.