Pre-Code Hollywood: Sex, Immorality, and Insurrection in American Cinema; 1930-1934


Thomas Doherty - 1999
    Though more unbridled, salacious, subversive, and just plain bizarre than what came afterwards, the films of the period do indeed have the look of Hollywood cinema--but the moral terrain is so off-kilter that they seem imported from a parallel universe.In a sense, Doherty avers, the films of pre-Code Hollywood are from another universe. They lay bare what Hollywood under the Production Code attempted to cover up and push offscreen: sexual liaisons unsanctified by the laws of God or man, marriage ridiculed and redefined, ethnic lines crossed and racial barriers ignored, economic injustice exposed and political corruption assumed, vice unpunished and virtue unrewarded--in sum, pretty much the raw stuff of American culture, unvarnished and unveiled.No other book has yet sought to interpret the films and film-related meanings of the pre-Code era--what defined the period, why it ended, and what its relationship was to the country as a whole during the darkest years of the Great Depression... and afterward.

Room to Dream


David Lynch - 2018
    Lynch responds to each recollection and reveals the inner story of the life behind the art.

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.

The Age of Movies: Selected Writings


Pauline Kael - 2011
    Kael called movies "the most total and encompassing art form we have," and she made her reviews a platform for considering both film and the worlds it engages, crafting in the process a prose style of extraordinary wit, precision, and improvisatory grace. To read The Age of Movies, the first new selection in more than a generation, is to be swept up into an endlessly revealing and entertaining dialogue with Kael at her witty, exhilarating, and opinionated best. Her ability to evoke the essence of a great artist-an Orson Welles or a Robert Altman-or to celebrate the way even seeming trash could tap deeply into our emotions was matched by her unwavering eye for the scams and self-deceptions of a corrupt movie industry. Here in this career spanning collection are her appraisals of the films that defined an era-among them Breathless, Bonnie and Clyde, The Leopard, The Godfather, Last Tango in Paris, Nashville-along with many others, some awaiting rediscovery, all providing the occasion for masterpieces of observation and insight, alive on every page.

Hollywood Babylon


Kenneth Anger - 1959
    Originally published in Paris, this is a collection of Hollywood's darkest and best kept secrets from the pen of Kenneth Anger, a former child movie actor who grew up to become one of America's leading underground film-makers.

Stanley Kubrick: A Biography


John Baxter - 1996
    In the 1950s he was one of the few American filmmakers, with Paths of Glory, to achieve the gravitas of European cinema. To 1960s audiences he was the man who made Dr. Strangelove, the influential anti-war movie, and the counterculture favorite 2001: A Space Odyssey. In the 1970s he created his hymn to urban violence, A Clockwork Orange, and in the 1980s distilled the nature of private madness and collective insanity in The Shining and Full Metal Jacket.Yet little is still known of the man and the influence exerted by his private life on his public art. Born in the Bronx, Kubrick has lived since 1961 in seclusion in rural England. From in-depth interviews with a range of people who have known the man best, from his childhood to the present, John Baxter has extracted the most complete account available of Kubrick's life: the conflicts with partners and stars, the failure to make Napoleon, the failed marriages and broken friendships, the use and abuse of writers and other creative collaborators.Kubrick emerges from this detailed and complex telling as a man both sensitive and ruthless, petulant and generous: a man who adulates reason but whose films reflect the wildest excesses of passion and who, above all, has dared to live life on his terms, whatever the price.

Sculpting in Time


Andrei Tarkovsky - 1984
    In Sculpting in Time, he has left his artistic testament, a remarkable revelation of both his life and work. Since Ivan's Childhood won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1962, the visionary quality and totally original and haunting imagery of Tarkovsky's films have captivated serious movie audiences all over the world, who see in his work a continuation of the great literary traditions of nineteenth-century Russia. Many critics have tried to interpret his intensely personal vision, but he himself always remained inaccessible.In Sculpting in Time, Tarkovsky sets down his thoughts and his memories, revealing for the first time the original inspirations for his extraordinary films--Ivan's Childhood, Andrey Rublyov, Solaris, The Mirror, Stalker, Nostalgia, and The Sacrifice. He discusses their history and his methods of work, he explores the many problems of visual creativity, and he sets forth the deeply autobiographical content of part of his oeuvre--most fascinatingly in The Mirror and Nostalgia. The closing chapter on The Sacrifice, dictated in the last weeks of Tarkovsky's life, makes the book essential reading for those who already know or who are just discovering his magnificent work.

Talking Pictures: How to Watch Movies


Ann Hornaday - 2017
    But with so much variety between an Alfred Hitchcock thriller and a Nora Ephron romantic comedy, how can everyday viewers determine what makes a good movie?In Talking Pictures, veteran film critic Ann Hornaday walks us through the production of a typical movie—from writing the script and casting to the final sound edit—and explains how to evaluate each piece of the process. How do we know if a film is well-written, above and beyond snappy dialogue? What constitutes a great screen performance? What goes into praiseworthy cinematography, editing, and sound design? And what does a director really do? Full of engaging anecdotes and interviews with actors and filmmakers, Talking Pictures will help us see movies in a whole new light—not just as fans, but as film critics in our own right.

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.

Making Movies


Sidney Lumet - 1995
    Drawing on 40 years of experience on movies ranging from Long Day's Journey Into Night to The Verdict, Lumet explains the painstaking labor that results in two hours of screen magic.

The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood


Sam Wasson - 2020
    and Fosse comes the revelatory account of the making of a modern American masterpiece Chinatown is the Holy Grail of 1970s cinema. Its twist ending is the most notorious in American film and its closing line of dialogue the most haunting. Here for the first time is the incredible true story of its making.In Sam Wasson's telling, it becomes the defining story of the most colorful characters in the most colorful period of Hollywood history. Here is Jack Nicholson at the height of his powers, as compelling a movie star as there has ever been, embarking on his great, doomed love affair with Anjelica Huston. Here is director Roman Polanski, both predator and prey, haunted by the savage death of his wife, returning to Los Angeles, the scene of the crime, where the seeds of his own self-destruction are quickly planted. Here is the fevered dealmaking of "The Kid" Robert Evans, the most consummate of producers. Here too is Robert Towne's fabled script, widely considered the greatest original screenplay ever written. Wasson for the first time peels off layers of myth to provide the true account of its creation.Looming over the story of this classic movie is the imminent eclipse of the '70s filmmaker-friendly studios as they gave way to the corporate Hollywood we know today. In telling that larger story, The Big Goodbye will take its place alongside classics like Easy Riders, Raging Bulls and The Devil's Candy as one of the great movie-world books ever written.Praise for Sam Wasson:"Wasson is a canny chronicler of old Hollywood and its outsize personalities...More than that, he understands that style matters, and, like his subjects, he has a flair for it." - The New Yorker "Sam Wasson is a fabulous social historian because he finds meaning in situations and stories that would otherwise be forgotten if he didn't sleuth them out, lovingly." - Hilton Als

John Wayne: The Life and Legend


Scott Eyman - 2014
    He became a symbol of America itself. He epitomized the Western film, which for many people epitomized America. He identified with conservative political causes from the early 1930s to his death in 1979, making him a hero to one generation of Americans and a villain to another. But unlike fellow actor Ronald Reagan, Wayne had no interest in politics as a career. Like many stars, he altered his life story, claiming to have become an actor almost by accident when in fact he had studied drama and aspired to act for most of his youth. He married three times, all to Latina women, and conducted a lengthy affair with Marlene Dietrich, as unlikely a romantic partner as one could imagine for the Duke. Wayne projected dignity, integrity, and strength in all his films, even when his characters were flawed, and whatever character he played was always prepared to confront injustice in his own way. More than thirty years after his death, he remains the standard by which male stars are judged and an actor whose morally unambiguous films continue to attract sizeable audiences.Scott Eyman interviewed Wayne, as well as many family members, and he has drawn on previously unpublished reminiscences from friends and associates of the Duke in this biography, as well as documents from his production company that shed light on Wayne’s business affairs. He traces Wayne from his childhood to his stardom in Stagecoach and dozens of films after that. Eyman perceptively analyzes Wayne’s relationship with John Ford, the director with whom he’s most associated and who made some of Wayne’s greatest films, among them She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, The Quiet Man, and The Searchers. His evaluation of Wayne himself is shrewd: a skilled actor who was reluctant to step outside his comfort zone. Wayne was self-aware; he once said, “I’ve played the kind of man I’d like to have been.” It’s that man and the real John Wayne who are brilliantly profiled in Scott Eyman’s insightful biography of a true American legend.

The Stanley Kubrick Archives


Christiane Kubrick - 2005
    2001 is a nonverbal experience?. I tried to create a visual experience, one that bypasses verbalized pigeonholing and directly penetrates the subconscious with an emotional and philosophic content.? The philosophy behind Part I borrows from this line of thinking: from the opening sequence of Killer's Kiss to the final frames of Eyes Wide Shut, Kubrick's complete films will be presented chronologically and wordlessly via frame enlargements. A completely nonverbal experience. Part 2: The Creative Process Divided into chapters chronologically by film, Part 2 brings to life the creative process of Kubrick's filmmaking by presenting a remarkable collection of material from his archives, including photographs, props, posters, artwork, set designs, sketches, correspondence, documents, screenplays, drafts, notes, and shooting schedules. Accompanying the visual material are essays by noted Kubrick scholars, articles written by and about Kubrick, and a selection of Kubrick's best interviews. Special features ? Part 1 features 800 film stills scanned directly from the original prints and interpositives ? Part 2 presents about 800 items from the archives, most of which have never been published before ? essays by Kubrick scholars Gene D. Phillips, Michel Ciment, and Rodney Hill ? selected articles and essays, including interviews with and essays by Stanley Kubrick ? illustrated Kubrickchronology ? audio CD featuring a 70-minute 1966 interview of Stanley Kubrick by Jeremy Bernstein **BONUS** ? books in the first print run will each include a twelve-frame film strip from a 70mm print of 2001: A Space Odyssey owned by Stanley Kubrick Made in cooperation with Jan Harlan, Christiane Kubrick, and the Stanley Kubrick Estate. The editor: Alison Castle received a BA in philosophy from Columbia University and an MA in photography and film from New York University (NYU/International Center of Photography masters program). Castle also edited TASCHEN's Some Like it Hot. She lives in Paris, home of the world's best cinemas.

How I Made A Hundred Movies In Hollywood And Never Lost A Dime


Roger Corman - 1990
    He also discusses his distribution of the Bergman, Fellini, and Truffaut movies that later won Academy Awards in the Best Foreign Film category. Corman alumni—John Sayles, Martin Scorsese, Jack Nicholson, Vincent Price, Francis Ford Coppola, Peter Bogdanovich, Peter Fonda, Joe Dante, and Jonathan Demme, among others—contribute their recollections to give added perspective to Corman's often hilarious, always informative autobiography.

On the History of Film Style


David Bordwell - 1979
    Style assigns films to a tradition, distinguishes a classic, and signals the arrival of a pathbreaking innovation. David Bordwell now shows how film scholars have attempted to explain stylistic continuity and change across the history of cinema.Bordwell scrutinizes the theories of style launched by AndrE Bazin, NoEl Burch, and other film historians. In the process he celebrates a century of cinema, integrating discussions of film classics such as The Birth of a Nation and Citizen Kane with analyses of more current box-office successes such as Jaws and The Hunt for Red October. Examining the contributions of both noted and neglected directors, he considers the earliest filmmaking, the accomplishments of the silent era, the development of Hollywood, and the strides taken by European and Asian cinema in recent years.On the History of Film Style proposes that stylistic developments often arise from filmmakers' search for engaging and efficient solutions to production problems. Bordwell traces this activity across history through a detailed discussion of cinematic staging. Illustrated with more than 400 frame enlargements, this wide-ranging study provides a new lens for viewing cinema.