Signs and Meaning in the Cinema


Peter Wollen - 1969
    Divided into three sections, Part One deals with the work of S.M. Eisenstein, both as a director and theorist of his art. Part two concerns the auteur theory and investigates the recurrence of themes and images throughout a director's career. Part three shows how the study of cinema can be considered a province of the general study of signs. Throughout this richly illustrated book the relationship of the cinema to the other arts is kept constantly before the reader. This new edition includes a retrospective chapter by the author.

My Life and My Films


Jean Renoir - 1974
    François 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 in Paris, Hollywood, and India. Here are tantalizing secrets about his greatest films—The Rules of the Game, The Grand Illusion, The River, A Day in the Country, La Bête Humaine, Toni. But most of all, Renoir shows us himself: a man if dazzling simplicity, immense creativity, and profound humanity.

Hitchcock's Notebooks:: An Authorized And Illustrated Look Inside The Creative Mind Of Alfred Hitchcook


Dan Auiler - 1999
    Now you can share in the Master of Suspense's inspiration and development -- his entire creative process -- in Hitchcock's Notebooks.With the complete cooperation of the Hitchcock estate and access to the director's notebooks, journals, and archives, Dan Auiler takes you from the very beginnings of story creation to the master's final touches during post-production and publicity. Actual production notes from Hitchcock's masterpieces join detailed interviews with key production personnel, including writers, actors and actresses, and Hitchcock's personal assistant of more than thirty years.Mirroring the director's working methods to give you the actual feel of his process, and highlighted by nearly nearly one hundred photographs and illustrations, this is the definitive guide into the mind of a cinematic legend.

Double Lives, Second Chances: The Cinema of Krzysztof Kieslowski


Annette Insdorf - 1999
    His best-known films, Blue; White; Red; The Double Life of Veronique; and The Decalogue, remain watershed events in lmmaking history. Author Annette Insdorf, Kieslowskis close friend and translator, offers a revealing portrait of his life and monumental body of work. From the gold-bathed images of The Double Life of Veronique to the emotionally dark, visually haunting Blue, Kieslowskis films explore personal and social issues with inimitable brilliance. This paperback edition includes an updated introduction with information on the much anticipated release of Heaven (March 2002) which Kieslowski wrote and planned to film, before he died unexpectedly in March 1996.

Cult Movies: The Classics, the Sleepers, the Weird, and the Wonderful


Danny Peary - 1981
    A guide to more than one hundred of the most popular and controversial cult classic films ever made includes coverage of All About Eve, Tarzan and His Mate, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Film Art: An Introduction


David Bordwell - 2003
    It begins with an overview of film production, moves on to a consideration of the formal elements and techniques, covers film criticism and concludes with a brief section highlighting the key moments in film history. Illustrated with over 500 frame enlargements, many in colour, "Film Art" has been updated to include analysis of some of the most interesting films of recent years including "Raging Bull" and "Desperately Seeking Susan".

The Wes Anderson Collection


Matt Zoller Seitz - 2013
    A true auteur, Anderson is known for the visual artistry, inimitable tone, and idiosyncratic characterizations that make each of his films—Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, The Darjeeling Limited, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and Moonrise Kingdom—instantly recognizable as “Andersonian.”The Wes Anderson Collection is the first in-depth overview of Anderson’s filmography, guiding readers through his life and career. Previously unpublished photos, artwork, and ephemera complement a book-length conversation between Anderson and award-winning critic Matt Zoller Seitz. The interview and images are woven together in a meticulously designed book that captures the spirit of his films: melancholy and playful, wise and childish—and thoroughly original.

Film Form: Essays In Film Theory


Sergei Eisenstein - 1949
    From Sergei Eisenstein, a legendary pioneer in filmmaking and director of Battleship Potemkin, Film Form collects twelve essays written between 1928 and 1945 that demonstrate key points in the development of his film theory and in particular his analysis of the sound-film medium."By turns savagely polemical and whimsically humorous...Eisenstein's last book, like all his writings, is on fire with imagination...Jay Leyda, well-known authority on Eisenstein's work, has done an excellently thorough job of editing and translating."??—??Saturday Review

Easy Riders, Raging Bulls


Peter Biskind - 1998
    This down-and-dirty romp through Hollywood in the 1970s introduces the young filmmakers--Coppola, Scorsese, Lucas, Spielberg, Altman, and Beatty--and recreates an era that transformed American culture forever.

From Reel to Deal: Everything You Need to Create a Successful Independent Film


Dov Simens - 2000
    From screenwriting & budgeting to marketing, Simens provides encyclopedic, precise, & creative instruction for putting your vision up on the screen.

The Films in My Life


François Truffaut - 1975
    Equally fascinating is the very large body of film criticism Truffaut wrote over many years for Cahiers du Cinema and other leading film journals. Wonderfully varied, personal, and informal, these reviews all communicate unabashed love for and an enormous excitement about the movies. The Films in My Life is Truffaut's own selection of more than one hundred essays that range widely over the history of film and pay tribute to Truffaut's particular heroes, among them Hitchcock, Welles, Chaplin, Renoir, Cocteau, Bergman, and Buñuel.

Film Theory: An Introduction


Robert Stam - 2000
    Film Theory multiplies the perspectives and positions, the situations and locations, from which film theory is spoken.

Steven Spielberg: Interviews


Lester D. Friedman - 2000
    Phrases like "phone home" and the music score from Jaws are now part of our cultural script, appearing in commercials, comedy routines, and common conversation.Yet few scholars have devoted time to studying Spielberg's vast output of popular films despite the director's financial and aesthetic achievements. Spanning twenty-five years of Spielberg's career, Steven Spielberg: Interviews explores the issues, the themes, and the financial considerations surrounding his work. The blockbuster creator of E.T., Jaws, and Schindler's List talks about dreams and the almighty dollar."I'm not really interested in making money," he says. "That's always come as the result of success, but it's not been my goal, and I've had a tough time proving that to people."Ranging from Spielberg's twenties to his mid-fifties, the interviews chart his evolution from a brash young filmmaker trying to make his way in Hollywood, to his spectacular blockbuster triumphs, to his maturation as a director seeking to inspire the imagination with meaningful subjects.The Steven Spielberg who emerges in these talks is a complex mix of businessman and artist, of arrogance and insecurity, of shallowness and substance. Often interviewers will uncover the director's human side, noting how changes in Spielberg's personal life -- marriage, divorce, fatherhood, remarriage -- affect his movies. But always the interviewers find keys to the story-telling and filmmaking talent that have made Spielberg's characters and themes shape our times and inhabit our dreams."Every time I go to a movie, it's magic, no matter what the movie's about," he says. "Whether you watch eight hours of Shoah or whether it's Ghostbusters, when the lights go down in the theater and the movie fades in, it's magic."

Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting


Syd Field - 1979
    Now the celebrated producer, lecturer, teacher, and bestselling author has updated his classic guide for a new generation of filmmakers, offering a fresh insider’s perspective on the film industry today. From concept to character, from opening scene to finished script, here are easily understood guidelines to help aspiring screenwriters—from novices to practiced writers—hone their craft. Filled with updated material—including all-new personal anecdotes and insights, guidelines on marketing and collaboration, plus analyses of recent films, from American Beauty to Lord of the Rings—Screenplay presents a step-by-step, comprehensive technique for writing the screenplay that will succeed in Hollywood. Discover:•Why the first ten pages of your script are crucially important•How to visually “grab” the reader from page one, word one •Why structure and character are the essential foundation of your screenplay•How to adapt a novel, a play, or an article into a screenplay•Tips on protecting your work—three legal ways to claim ownership of your screenplay•The essentials of writing great dialogue, creating character, building a story line, overcoming writer’s block, getting an agent, and much more.With this newly updated edition of his bestselling classic, Syd Field proves yet again why he is revered as the master of the screenplay—and why his celebrated guide has become the industry’s gold standard for successful screenwriting.

Howard Hawks: The Grey Fox of Hollywood


Todd McCarthy - 1997
    Sometime partner of the eccentric Howard Hughes, drinking buddy of William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway, an inveterate gambler and a notorious liar, Hawks was the most modern of the great masters and one of the first directors to declare his independence from the major studios. He played Svengali to Lauren Bacall, Montgomery Clift, and others, but Hawks's greatest creation may have been himself.As The Atlantic Monthly noted, "Todd McCarthy . . . has gone further than anyone else in sorting out the truths and lies of the life, the skills and the insight and the self-deceptions of the work." "A fluent biography of the great director, a frequently rotten guy but one whose artistic independence and standards of film morality never failed." -- The New York Times Book Review; "Hawks's life, until now rather an enigma, has been put into focus and made one with his art in Todd McCarthy's wise and funny Howard Hawks." -- The Wall Street Journal; "Excellent . . . a respectful, exhaustive, and appropriately smartass look at Hollywood's most versatile director." -- Newsweek.