The Best Books About Film

[davida2]

Best out-of-print books on film that need to be released again...

Murnau - Lotte Eisner
Guide For the Film Fanatic - Danny Peary
Cult Movies - Danny Peary

Sigh...Bordwell's Ozu book recently spotted on amazon for $1200 !

[kinjitsu]

Sigh...Bordwell's Ozu book recently spotted on amazon for $1200 !

Madness. Currently $200 and up at Abebooks, though I bought my copy a while back for $28 from Amazon or Abebooks, considerably less than those outrageous prices.

Btw, has anyone read Phillip Lopate's excellent collection of film essays, Totally, Tenderly, Tragically?

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

The Lopate collection is excellent. I have a copy at home and never regret having purchased it.

[otis]

Sigh...Bordwell's Ozu book recently spotted on amazon for $1200 !

Don't tell 'em I told you, but there's a rumour Bordwell's book will be available online some time soon. More news as and when...

[otis]

David [Bordwell] has agreed to have his Ozu book online... I expect it to be available in the fall.

[ellipsis7]

Yes he told me a couple of years back he was considering this option... Soon after I sourced a decent copy of his OZU POETICS OF CINEMA for $30 on abebooks... Hope all the stills can be cleared for this internet pdf version - is often the difficulty with taking this route...

[otis]

Already available online (with some images removed for copyright reasons):
Noel Burch's To the Distant Observer: Form and Meaning in the Japanese Cinema
Donald Richie's Japanese Cinema: Film Style and National Character

[Billy Liar]

Here are a few that I've enjoyed immensely over the years

Emeric Pressburger, The Life & Death of a Screenwriter - Kevin Macdonald
James Whale - James Curtis
Godard - Richard Roud
Jean Vigo - P.E. Sallles Gomes
Cocteau on the Film - Cocteau in conversation with Andre Fraigneau
The Cinema of Carl Dreyer - Tom Milne
Grierson on Documentary - Grierson/Ed by Forsyth Hardy
Documentary Diary - Paul Rotha
Nightmare of Ecstasy, The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr - Rudolph Grey
Harpo Speaks - Harpo Marx
Kurosawa - Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto
Signs and Meaning in the Cinema - Paul Wollen

[Argonaut69]

Being lazy and not trawling back through, but has anyone mentioned Michael Wheeldon's two terrific "Psychotronic" books?

Must haves.

I have to second these picks. Somehow I misplaced my copies over the years but these are thoroughly fun books. I was surprised to find some of Weldon's assessments more in keeping with my own sentiments than the write-ups on the same films in Phil Hardy's highly esteemed Horror Encyclopedia. Examples would be Deathdream and The Omen which Hardy overrates and Mysery of The Wax Museum (the silent version) and The Innocents which he underrates.

[John Cope]

Has anyone read Wendy Everett's book on Terence Davies? I'm thinking of picking it up as all the reviews I've seen are outstanding. It looks like it contains a lot of thorough analysis and a very detailed interview.

Oh, and as to stuff I recommend: I like Horton on Angelopoulos, Marrone on Cavani, Burgoyne on 1900, Iain Sinclair on Crash, Alan Woods on Greenaway and Nochimson on Lynch (I love Nochimson on Lynch).

Jean-Luc Nancy's monograph on Kiarostami was also excellent and included perhaps the best, most focused interview with K yet.

Oh, and that collection of essays on Erice, The Open Window, is superb, too (God, I see how this could get out of hand).

[Anonymous]

Truffaut's book on Hitchcock is quoted once or twice in the thread ; it is a wonderful book for a child to get acquainted with the idea of cinema. It was around at home when I was ten or twelve ; I used to watch the photos and wonder what they could really look like when moving. Years later, I have seen most of the films discussed by Hitchcock and Truffaut — I've seen the ghostly lives the book encompasses.

Oddly, the other book which springs to mind is Kiju Oshida's take on Ozu. Oshida's theory about the sentient objects is a wonder.

[ellipsis7]

Great book on Hitchcock - however ruined Truffaut's filmmaking IMO...

Just reading OZU'S ANTI CINEMA - very interesting indeed, a personal perspective yet inherently spanning all the various ideas floated by Richie, Schrader, Desser, Bordwell, Burch, and incisively coming down closest to Bordwell, yet not depriving the others of essential insights...

[otis]

This blog is posting mp3s of the original Hitchcock Truffaut tapes from which the book was edited. Scroll down the right-hand column.

[ando]

There's a new release I found in my neighborhood Barnes & Noble edited by Bernhard Schwenk and Michael Sernff titled Pasolini & Death 1922-1975: Life-Work-Myth. It's easily the best study on Pasolini's work that I've ever read. Commemorating the 30th anniversary of his death, it's a collection of essays on his poetry and films, drawings and paintings, around which the chief proposition is that all his work was/is a concious seeking of death (mostly strange, however, is the notion, which I still don't rest well with, that his violent death was somehow a reconciliation of his life and work). Needless to say it's a book that's long overdue, especially considering the influence that Pasolini has had with the intellectuals among us cineastes.

[Cobalt60]

Being lazy and not trawling back through, but has anyone mentioned Michael Wheeldon's two terrific "Psychotronic" books?

Just wanted to give a 3rd thumbs up to the "Psychotronic" books. Much more fun to read and interesting then most of the horror/sci-fi encyclopedia's out there. Also, he is more inclusive of stuff like black exploitation, sexploitation, biker, girl gang, sleaze, that sort of thing. It also the work of someone that has dedicated their life to these kinds of films and it really bleeds through (no pun) the pages. As life long devotee of cult films I really find him a kind of kindred spirit in a way

[blindside8zao]

I'm about to order a lot of silent films to start studying and wanted some good reading to accompany it. I'm getting Kino's Griffith set so I need something on Griffith. The beaver site list had "family secrets" listed but no reviews. I want something that will give me a good technical analysis of the editing techniques, etc...

I'm also getting the Movie's Begin set but thought most of them would be fine unaccompanied by text.

Also, been reading a bit on Stroheim, Bazin's essays. Is there a good book out there?

I've seen a lot of favorable reviews of Eisner's books on Lang and Murnau but no one has really mentioned the Haunted Screen. An amazon reviewer, not always to be trusted, called it a "picture book", but I've also read Herzog's praise. Does anyone have any opinions about the Haunted Screen in comparison to other Expressionist film studies?

My wallet won't stomach a study of Russian silents yet, unfortunately.

[filmfan]

I'm about to order a lot of silent films to start studying and wanted some good reading to accompany it. I'm getting Kino's Griffith set so I need something on Griffith.

Try to find Karl Brown's memoir of his working with Griffith...it's very entertaining and, I feel, a seminal book to have about film.

[NABOB OF NOWHERE]

I'm about to order a lot of silent films to start studying and wanted some good reading to accompany it.

Brownlow's 'The Parade's gone by' set me alight regarding silent film when I first read it in my golden youth. His 'Hollywood' title to accompany the TV series (sadly in dvd limbo at present) is a bit more 'coffee table but a good read nonetheless. Everson's 'American Silent film' is also a good middle of the road starter too.

[ellipsis7]

I have those two - both good - also BILLY BITZER: HIS STORY, another cameraman who figures large in the D.W.Griffith story...

[blindside8zao]

Thank you for the recommendations, but from reading about your books they seem to be just accounts, interviews, making ofs, starters. I'm looking for decent analytical studies of the works. For example, a study of Griffith's editing style. All the other stuff would be good if it was mixed in with this. And btw, that the parade has gone by is like 80 dollars on amazon used.

[ellipsis7]

Well if you want a heavyweight approach, these (which I haven't read) 8 volumes from the bfi seem pretty comprehensive (and an ongoing project)...

Griffith Project, Volume I - VIII: General editing by Paolo Cherchi Usai

No other silent film director has been so extensively studied as D. W. Griffith. However, only a small group of his more than 500 films has been the subject of a systematic analysis and the vast majority of his other works stills await proper examination. For the first time in film studies, the complete creative output of Griffith - from Professional Jealousy (1907) to The Struggle (1931) - will be explored in this multi-volume collection of contributions from an international team of leading scholars in the field.

Created as a companion to the on-going retrospective held by the Pordenone Silent Film Festival, The Griffith Project is an indispensable guide to the work of a crucial figure in the arts of the nineteenth century

[NABOB OF NOWHERE]

Thank you for the recommendations, but from reading about your books they seem to be just accounts, interviews, making ofs, starters. I'm looking for decent analytical studies of the works. For example, a study of Griffith's editing style. All the other stuff would be good if it was mixed in with this. And btw, that the parade has gone by is like 80 dollars on amazon used.

I bought a few copies of Griffithiana an english/italian bilingual quarterly journal in the early/mid Nineties which are more archeological (without invoking French heavyweight Lacanians and the like). I see they were/are?? distributed in the US by John Hopkins University.I got mine through the BFI. They also used to do special issues on early animation too so it's worth a trawl around to see what their back-issues can offer.

If you're more interested in the technical aspects rather than the academic/ psycho-analytic I can recommend Barry Salt's tome on the History of Film Technology.

With regard to the price of Parade? I think Brownlow's love and commitment to Silent film is without parallel and would venture to say that it's worth it. Also if you're interested in Westerns his War,West and the Wilderness is also a good read.

Finally if you want to start diving really deep into murky waters Paolo Cherchi Usai's Burning Passions - An introduction to the Study of Silent cinema is a handy springboard. I've left off more German/European centred studies as you seem intent on going for a ride with DWG first off.
(If this is the case I might of been a bit harsh on Everson who does devote a lot of his book to Big Daddy and is definitely worth looking at if only to be aware of the received thinking on Griffiths) .

[blindside8zao]

this will be an excellent list to browse through in order to find things. It might be more beneficial, financially, from what you al have shared, to go ahead and shoot for a book specifically dealing with silent cinema instead of just Griffith. I an only intent on Griffith right now because I'm about to order the Kino set. I will move on after him.

I'm afriad the Ursai collection is a little overwhelming. I'm already an English major, I'm just doing this on the side.

[filmfan]

I just picked up an oral biography by Jack Cardiff...very interesting and fair observations on the films and stars he worked with...especially his work on the Powell Pressburger films...especially the all in the studio "Black Narcissus".

[Gordon]

Continuing on from books by legendary British cinematographers, Oswald Morris published his autobiography in February, Huston, We Have a Problem: A Kaleidoscope of Filmmaking Memories. More info HERE.

If you have seen the documentaries, John Huston: The Man, the Movies, the Maverick or Glorious Technicolor, you'll have heard him tell the great anecdote about the screening of rushes with the Technicolor reps for Moulin Rouge, so it should be a great read. Morris was one of the great cinematographers; one of the few who was equally adept in monochrome and colour, spherical and anamorphic and he was, as you may know, one of the master experimenters in cinematography, especially with his films with John Huston. I'm a huge fan of both these daring filmmakers, so this was a great find.