BFI Film Classics & Modern Classic Series

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Gregory
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 4:07 pm

#26 Post by Gregory » Thu Feb 10, 2005 3:22 pm

I'm looking forward to the publication of Bringing Up Baby in the Film Classics Series in June, but I'm totally unfamiliar with the author, Peter Swaab.
Can anyone tell me about his critical approach?

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milk114
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#27 Post by milk114 » Thu Feb 10, 2005 10:02 pm

I'd like to add that the new Matrix book is quite good at contextualling the film within the sci-fi genre. It doesn't focus on the "philosophies" of the film that every other book deals with thankfully. It's worth a look, especially the notions of the viewing and spectacles.

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Godot
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#28 Post by Godot » Mon Feb 28, 2005 2:08 am

Gregory wrote:I'm totally unfamiliar with the author, Peter Swaab.
Can anyone tell me about his critical approach?
He specialization is in Romantic period writers (Wordsworth), poetry, and gay studies. It doesn't appear that he's published on film before this monograph. I'm still looking forward to this book, of course, since this is one of my favorite films. Perhaps the "outsider" view will be rewarding, like Paglia's approach to The Birds. There are a number of fine scholarly chapters and essays on BUB in books on Hawks (I particularly recommend Mast's and Wood's, but also the collections edited by McBride and Hillier) as well as Rothman's The "I" of the Camera.

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#29 Post by leo goldsmith » Mon Feb 28, 2005 2:17 am

Has anyone read the Michel Chion monograph on The Thin Red Line yet? I'd of course be very interested in reading what he has to say about the film's sound design, but I'm sure there's plenty more in the book. Anyone know?

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backstreetsbackalright
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#30 Post by backstreetsbackalright » Mon Feb 28, 2005 2:31 am

I'm a huge fan of the ones on Rocco and His Brothers and Dead Man. So far that's been the best of the 5-10 I've read. I definitely recommend them to any fans of those films.

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Fletch F. Fletch
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#31 Post by Fletch F. Fletch » Mon Feb 28, 2005 10:01 am

leo goldsmith wrote:Has anyone read the Michel Chion monograph on The Thin Red Line yet? I'd of course be very interested in reading what he has to say about the film's sound design, but I'm sure there's plenty more in the book. Anyone know?
Here's a review of the book.

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#32 Post by leo goldsmith » Mon Feb 28, 2005 10:35 am

Fletch F. Fletch wrote:Here's a review of the book.
Yeah, I saw that. Pretty thin review, unfortunately.

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whipsilk
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#33 Post by whipsilk » Wed Jun 08, 2005 5:41 am

I own about 15 of these little volumes. Most of them have something worthwhile, even if they're utterly wrong-headed or focused on a single bizarre interpretation (Chion's Eyes Wide Shut comes close to this category, although it's very well written). My favorites, though, are Salman Rushdie's very personal (and terribly funny) The Wizard of Oz, Jonathan Rosenbaum's illuminating Dead Man, and Simon Louvish's detailed reading of It's a Gift, the chapter titles of which are direct quotes from the movie ("Those were my mother's feathers", "Closed on account of molasses").

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Godot
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#34 Post by Godot » Wed Jun 08, 2005 6:47 am

Are any of the other BFI series worth picking up?
We seem to cover this in every incarnation of the forum. It's a great series, but I highly recommend you search out older discontinued series as well, such as the Indiana University filmguides from 1973 that feature Bordwell's Passion of Joan of Arc and Naremore's Psycho; the Focus On... series that covered genres, directors, and specific films (Blow Up and Seventh Seal are particularly good); the Praeger series from the '60's featuring Movie critics on such topics as Fritz Lang and Antonioni; and the fine BFI "Cinema One" series from the late '60's that first published many works on directors, such as Wood's Howard Hawks as well as classics on Lewton, Melville, and Wollen's Signs and Meanings in the Cinema).

Here are my favorites of the BFI Film Classics series:
Dead Man (Rosenbaum)
Rio Bravo (Wood)
It's a Gift (Louvish)
Cat People (Newman)
M (Kaes)
Belle de Jour (Wood)
Brief Encounter (Dyer)
Taxi Driver (Taubin)
Eyes Wide Shut (Chion)

I enjoyed the EWS book, especially Chion's focus on repetition (narrative, visual, verbal, and parroting) and Shnitzler's novella (and Kubrick's pointed deviations from it). It's easy to pick out one approach to the film and attack it (in particular, his hypothesis that one could see the film from the viewpoint of their as-yet-unfertilized fetus); I read that as an interesting take on the reconciliation and final line, but it's not nearly as heavily treated in the book as Chion's breakdown of the narrative structure. Like some enthusiastic criticism, he throws in ideas that seem difficult to support; many of my favorite critics, including Rosenbaum, Wood, Nelson, Cameron, and Fujiwara, go too far in my estimation, yet I still learn so much from their writing that I don't mind ideas that stretch credulity. I see criticism and theory as just tools to help me appreciate the art; I take what's useful to me and shrug off what I don't understand or disagree with. There are a number of critics that I struggle to understand (Bordwell, Telotte, Durgnat, Thompson, Wollen, Mulvey) but still enjoy enough of their ideas that I want to understand them more fully. It comes down to your confidence as a film reader; you should be able to discern good from bad criticism, depending on how well an idea is argued. But whether something is useful to you in undertanding a work of art may have very little to do with how well (or not) it is argued; sometimes a poorly-supported but insightful idea may lead you to a new appreciation for an aspect of film that you might otherwise not have considered. That's why I like to read the single-film volumes from older series (such as the Indiana Press) as well, though they are more difficult to find (they used to be holy grails; at least with the internet, they are now only an Alibris or Amazon or Half.com away).

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#35 Post by leo goldsmith » Wed Jun 08, 2005 8:33 am

goofbutton wrote:Are any of the other BFI series worth picking up? I'm especially interested in the THIN RED LINE and EYES WIDE SHUT volumes.
The monograph on The Thin Red Line is good. Chion is given to purple prose and flights of fancy, but his writing is engaging and his ideas engaging. Unsurprisingly for Chion, his discussions of sound and narration make for the book's strongest points. But I did notice a few factual errors in his discussion, which are probably attributable to the difficulty of understanding the film in translation (or via subtitles, or for those whose first language is not English). For example, he attributes the last lines of voiceover ("Look out on the things you made.... All things shining.") to Witt, from beyond the grave, which I'm fairly sure is wrong.

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Fletch F. Fletch
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#36 Post by Fletch F. Fletch » Mon Jun 13, 2005 10:46 am

goofbutton wrote:Are any of the other BFI series worth picking up? I'm especially interested in the THIN RED LINE and EYES WIDE SHUT volumes.
I'd also like to second the recommendation for The Thin Red Line BFI book. It is excellent. Very well written and with some pretty decent analysis. I'd also recommend Manhola Dargis' book on L.A. Confidential which is very well researched (she interviewed both Ellroy and Hanson) and provides excellent insight into L.A.'s history and how it ties into the movie. A really good read if you're a fan of the movie.

I'd also recommend BFI's Reader series -- Science Fiction/Horror, Action/Spectacle Cinema, and American Independent Cinema. They are basically collections of the articles, reviews and interviews from back issues of Sight and Sound. Kind of the best of the best I guess you'd say. I have the above three anthologies and they are excellent cross-sections of their respective genres. Definitely worth picking up.

loplop
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#37 Post by loplop » Mon Apr 10, 2006 2:50 pm

I've read a handful of those little bfi series books, each one specialising on an individual film. They're a bit of a mixed bunch in my mind. Can anyone recommend any that particularly stand out ?

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#38 Post by David Ehrenstein » Mon Apr 10, 2006 4:09 pm

I more than highly reccomend Colin McCabe's BFI book on Performance. In a minimum of pages he supplies a maximum of information about Cammell, the film and everyone connected to it. Far and away one of the best film books of any kind ever.

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Godot
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#39 Post by Godot » Tue Apr 11, 2006 6:05 am

loplop wrote:I've read a handful of those little bfi series books, each one specialising on an individual film. They're a bit of a mixed bunch in my mind. Can anyone recommend any that particularly stand out ?
If you go back to the first two pages of this very thread, you'll see quite a few posts detailing our favorite monographs from the BFI series, including explanations for why we favor them. I haven't added any new recommendations to my list, since the release schedule for editions has been sporadic (with a few highly-anticipated ones delayed indefinitely or cancelled). My three favorites (read most often):
Dead Man (Rosenbaum)
Rio Bravo (Wood)
It's a Gift (Louvish)

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Fletch F. Fletch
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#40 Post by Fletch F. Fletch » Tue Apr 11, 2006 8:52 am

loplop wrote:I've read a handful of those little bfi series books, each one specialising on an individual film. They're a bit of a mixed bunch in my mind. Can anyone recommend any that particularly stand out?
Well, it also depends on how you feel about the given film as well but I have quite a few of 'em and some of my faves are:

Dead Man (as someone else mentioned) which is an excellent analysis of Jarmusch's film also with some good factual info as well. It really made me appreciate the film that much more.

The Right Stuff is a good one. The author managed to interview Kaufman and builds quite a convincing argument about the film being an odd marriage of avant garde film techniques and big budget studio film.

Heat is a very nice look at Mann's film with a nice comparison to the T.V. movie, L.A. Takedown, that came before it. Very well written.

L.A. Confidential is also a keeper as Dargis talks about the film in relation to the history of Los Angeles. Very interesting stuff.

Also, the ones on The Thing, The Birds and The Thin Red Line are quite good too.

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bunuelian
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#41 Post by bunuelian » Tue Apr 11, 2006 9:21 am

I recently read the bfi Andrei Rublev, which is quite good. It fell far short of answering all my questions about the film, but it has strong analysis and enough interesting insights to make it worth the read.[/i]

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Gregory
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#42 Post by Gregory » Tue Apr 11, 2006 2:17 pm

I accumulated a small pile of the BFI classics books a while ago when I found good deals on them. Because they're from an academic press in the U.S. good discounts are rare and they've recently raised the cover price to $14.95, but some of them really are worth it. I'm still reading through them as I watch or re-watch the films, but of those I've read these have been the most informed and insightful: The Magnificent Ambersons, Rio Bravo, Wings of the Dove, L'Age d'or, Seven, Cat People, Shadows, and To Be or Not to Be.

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Gregory
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#43 Post by Gregory » Sat Jun 02, 2007 7:11 pm

Godot wrote:His specialization is in Romantic period writers (Wordsworth), poetry, and gay studies. It doesn't appear that he's published on film before this monograph. I'm still looking forward to this book, of course, since this is one of my favorite films. Perhaps the "outsider" view will be rewarding, like Paglia's approach to The Birds. There are a number of fine scholarly chapters and essays on BUB in books on Hawks (I particularly recommend Mast's and Wood's, but also the collections edited by McBride and Hillier) as well as Rothman's The "I" of the Camera.
Yeah, I ended up looking up a page about Swaab at the University College London site. His interest in gay and lesbian studies peaked my interest, mainly because I'd love to see someone attempt a thorough exploration of gender issues in the film, building off of what Andrew Britton achieved in his Hepburn monograph. However, I'm a little afraid that the book will fall prey to the jargon-laden writing that characterizes so much writing in the fields of literary criticism and cultural studies. I'm still looking forward to the book.
Thanks for the recommendations. The I of the Camera is one I have never gotten around to looking at.

After a couple of years of publishing few new titles in this series (and letting some of the older ones remain continually out of print) it looks like there are several new releases for September: Apu Trilogy, The Big Lebowski, City Lights, Lawrence of Arabia; and Night Mail in December.
The listing for the Big Lebowski book at Amazon.com (and the cover image there) show it as a Film Classics series title, which (in addition to the presence of Night Mail) suggests they've abandoned the idea of only publishing books on films from the BFI list of 360 classic films. Maybe they've merged the Film Classics and Modern Classics series.

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#44 Post by David Ehrenstein » Sun Jun 03, 2007 12:43 pm

I'm a huge fan of the ones on Rocco and His Brothers and Dead Man. So far that's been the best of the 5-10 I've read. I definitely recommend them to any fans of those films.
They're both excellent, as is Colin McCabe's on Performance

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ellipsis7
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#45 Post by ellipsis7 » Sun Jun 03, 2007 1:01 pm

Yeah, to ROCCO & HIS BROTHERS plus especially L'AVVENTURA (Nowell-Smith), ROME OPEN CITY (Forgacs), BOUDU SAVED FROM DROWNING (Boston) and A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH (Christie)...

Am I right in thinking nothing from the French New Wave has been covered by the Film Classics series, or its companion Modern Classics?... Strange or what?...

In the latter line I really value L'ARGENT (Jones) & 10 (Andrew)...

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foggy eyes
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#46 Post by foggy eyes » Sun Jun 03, 2007 4:33 pm

Seconded for AMOLAD and 10! Another well worth a read is Sansho Dayu (Dudley Andrew & Carole Cavanaugh), and one to avoid - a real shame - is The Ghost & Mrs. Muir (Frieda Grafe).

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domino harvey
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#47 Post by domino harvey » Fri May 23, 2008 8:59 pm

Does anyone know why these books keep going out of print so fast? Is it just because there's not enough money in the BFI budget to reprint once a title sells out?

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Cash Flagg
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#48 Post by Cash Flagg » Fri May 23, 2008 9:17 pm

Detour on July 8th and Night of the Living Dead on August 8th!

ptmd
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#49 Post by ptmd » Fri May 23, 2008 11:54 pm

Does anyone know why these books keep going out of print so fast? Is it just because there's not enough money in the BFI budget to reprint once a title sells out?
The whole BFI Press division was recently shut down and is in the midst of being transferred over to another publisher. This has created all sorts of problems both with texts already in print and for new ones coming out. Aaron Gerow's excellent new book on Kitano has been out for about six months, but you wouldn't know it because the first shipment of books only recently arrived in the US (I pre-ordered mine almost a year ago and just got it last month) and review copies still haven't been sent out. Hopefully, this will all be normalized within another six months or so but the farming-out of the BFI titles was one of the worst things to happen to film publishing in the past decade.

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tojoed
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Re: BFI's Classic & Modern Film Series

#50 Post by tojoed » Sat May 23, 2009 5:07 pm

Released this week, Amelie Hastie on Ida Lupino's The Bigamist.

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