The Film Book: A Complete Guide to the World of Cinema

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The choice should be an easy one, given that Claire was born in the twentieth century and has already seen the future - in history books. But things are never simple where the Frasers are concerned, as father and son unwittingly come face to face on the battlefield, and an old adversary reaches forward in time to threaten the next generation. Proving you don’t need to rehash the plot (it’s only there to secure financing). And for that essay ‘White Elephant Art vs. Termite Art’. And for the undeceived appreciation of Sam Fuller. Rescues, with painterly intelligence, a defunct form. The anthology (in two volumes) of the Cahiers and Liberation French critic offers a panoramic view of the changes French criticism went through from the 1960s to the ’90s. The books that most influence you tend to come early in one’s life – whether one likes it or not, everyone is a product of their generation. I started reading about cinema in the late 1960s, the heyday of auteurism: the books that I read then formed my taste and have marked me as a certain kind of cinephile and, 40 years on, after the great adventure (or misadventure) of theory, that is still how I would define myself.

While I tried to avoid screenplay books here, I did want to mention this masterful autobiography. Goldman is one of our greatest storytellers and he weaves an excellent tale detailing how it all happens. He doesn't shelter you from the ups and downs. I don’t think this has been equalled as a record of a life in show business desperate to get into art. Streamlining Plot: This involves focusing on essential plot points that drive the story forward. Subplots that don't contribute to the central narrative or theme are often minimized or eliminated.Two exemplary ways of making sense of a national film culture: the first is an encyclopedia that invites the seeker to find his or her own way through a labyrinth of myriad relationships; the second offers creative criss-cross readings of topoi and obsessions through various decades, genres and political systems. We consider these approaches preferable to the common and-then-and-then histories, as these are usually too industry-development-keyed – i.e. disinterested in spheres like documentary cinema, the avant garde, sponsored films, amateur praxis, etc, which we consider all equal in importance and interest. There are so many books on screenwriting out there and so few of them actually matter. If you want to read about the industry and the way to craft stories, you want to read the best advice out there. Above all, she must learn to rule and to understand that she has been given the power to remake society. She must fight - for herself, for her husband, and for all her new subjects who look to her for guidance and grace. For she will never be just Charlotte again. She must instead fulfil her destiny... as Queen.

I loved his willingness to find excitement in unexpected places, to do justice to merit when he found it and to write in such a strongly personal voice. Full of important things, like Manny Farber on Val Lewton and Roger Ebert on Russ Meyer, and evaluations of previously obscure films (Thunder Road) and film-makers (Sam Katzman). Five is not enough! It leaves no room to mention Ray Durgnat’s crucial book, A Mirror for England, that staked a claim for British cinema when few film enthusiasts in Britain cared; or Rachael Low’s pioneering seven-volume history of British cinema from the very beginning to, alas, only 1939, although Low is a treasure trove of discoveries still being made. Or Dan Talbot’s eclectic Film: An Anthology (1966), a stirring alternative to Ernest Lindgren and Paul Rotha, which first introduced me to writings by Manny Farber, Parker Tyler, Gilbert Seldes and Erwin Panofsky. Peter Wollen’s Signs and Meaning in the Cinema, as elegantly written as it was groundbreaking, made semiotics exciting and revealed the political and wider aesthetic context of film. And what about the writing that was never in book form when it was most influential? How many Xeroxes of Laura Mulvey’s ‘Visual Pleasure’ Screen article have I passed on, along with essays by P. Adams Sitney, Annette Michelson and many others, before film books became common? Tarkovsky is my all-time favourite director. But while this is fascinating, I sometimes find his statements frustratingly evasive. Or to the point but about very vague subjects: “Time”. Everything’s a lot clearer in the films. Yet this is what he had to say about them, and that makes it uniquely valuable. Covering every national school of film-making from Hollywood to Bollywood, this book has something for everyone. "Top 10" and "What to Watch" sections will inspire your next movie night. Test your knowledge with the essential trivia section - how much do you know about Oscar winners, biggest flops, banned films, and more?Like most people in the unique position of foreknowledge of what others have said, I have avoided the choices that now seem obvious in this survey. My list is therefore devised partly to champion books neglected by everyone else.

A deliciously gossipy biography of Harry Cohn, the feared and reviled head of Columbia Pictures. As comedian Red Skelton said of the man’s well-attended funeral, “It proves what Harry always said: ‘Give the public what they want and they’ll come out for it.’” Which are the most inspirational five books about film ever written? This was the question we asked 51 leading critics and writers, and their answers are printed here in full. This volume has already become a milestone in film criticism, and it isn’t hard to see why. For one thing, Perez magnificently vindicates the beauty of illusionism – a salutary attitude after decades of academic militancy that judged it a ruling-class plot. But even more crucially, he understands how every general theory of cinema must start from its concrete particulars as an artform. The book is really about nothing beyond the author’s own infinite sensitivity to the implications of style. Has anyone else been quite so astute regarding the poetics of the shot/reverse shot (in Straub-Huillet’s History Lessons) or the uses of stasis (in Dovzhenko’s Earth)? A work of transcendent intelligence.

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Again, I'm not the best with this stuff, so I love reading and getting better. This book has the nuts and bolts of what goes into creating the looks of your favorite films but also stories of how challenges were overcome on set. It's a problem solver's dream. Biography as something close to picaresque fiction. At once imaginative myth-making and insightful, demystifying critical essay. The first edition was published in 1986 and changed the way I thought about film acting and stardom. These are the books that I’ve lived with the longest (excepting Farber On Film), so I suppose they’re the ones that have had the most profound effect on me. Poetry as cinema, cinema as poetry. One of the best books on artistic endeavour and the craft of film-making. Just beautiful.