The Best Books About Film

[beamish14]

Other reviews I’ve encountered also point out the author / solipsism/vanity/potentially stalking Ms. May. Does it have any interesting anecdotes about her very illustrious career as a script doctor?

[soundchaser]

None that were especially surprising to me, although I admit I'm probably not the target audience for this book. You come away with the feeling that May was a very gifted screenwriter/script doctor, and there are a few low-hanging examples (strengthen the female characters in Tootsie, Reds needs more interpersonal conflict, etc.) but there's not enough insight into her process or how it fit into the wider context of script doctoring. The Birdcage and Primary Colors duo, to which a whole chapter is dedicated, are analyzed for their victories and faults as social documents rather than how and why they work as screenplays. Courogen is more focused on WHY May wanted to remain behind the scenes than the work she did there - again, a psychoanalytical framework in search of a compelling subject, rather than vice-versa. I don't understand why Courogen even likes May as a filmmaker or a writer, frankly.

[Maltic]

At one point, Courogen asks why filmmakers like Bogdanovich and Coppola weren't landed in director jail after high-profile disasters, and it's enough to make you want to throw the book across the room. The former's career DID tank at a certain point, after which time he was relegated to for-hire TV movies; the latter saw a huge return on investment from Apocalypse Now. Had Mikey and Nicky or Ishtar (a film I deeply love, to be clear) made three times their initial budgets, I suspect May would have directed more features. Using Bogdanovich and Coppola specifically to make this point suggests Courogen distrusts her audience to know better, or to think about anything beyond the cultural relevance of those two names. "These two are men, and so they had an easier time of it" is the depth of analysis here.

I've heard/read similar arguments with Boorman and Cimino as the "fall guys", even though May did not have a Deliverance or a Deerhunter.

(Needless to say I love all her films and wish there were more.)

[soundchaser]

Again, I'm not opposed to the claim that May had a more difficult time in the studio system because of her gender. It's just such a self-evident point nonetheless so misapplied in that particular instance.

[Stefan Andersson]

Two books about the production rivalry between Spartacus and the Yul Brynner project based on The Gladiators by Arthur Koestler; one volume contains Abraham Polonsky´s Gladiators screenplay:
https://themagnificent60s.com/2021/02/2 ... spartacus/
https://themagnificent60s.com/2021/03/0 ... ladiators/
https://www.cambridgescholars.com/produ ... 275-5699-7
https://www.cambridgescholars.com/produ ... 275-6020-8

[Mr Sausage]

Bloomsbury is having a 30% off back to school sale on their academic titles. It'll no doubt cover a lot of their film books. It also covers all their Shakespeare and Early Modern Drama.

[Peacock]

“OUR FIRST 100 YEARS: EXPANDED SECOND EDITION”

Just received ASC’s medium size coffee table book which I had to order direct from the ASC. It follows the pattern of a BTS photograph of a well known ASC cinematographer on set on one page and then the opposite page gives their name and a career bio (with a small headshot). It’s not as in depth as I would have liked and it is only one BTS picture per DP, with no interviews etc. But on the plus side the behind the scenes imagery is mostly ones I haven’t seen before. Silent era to present day. All black and white photos sadly.

Hope this little review helps someone someday!

[Peacock]

“APOCALYPSE NOW: THE LOST PHOTO ARCHIVE”

This coffee table picture book was a disappointment. It is made up of the highlights of Chas Gerretsen‘s unit and BTS still’s from part of the shoot of Apocalypse Now but using his war photojournalism background it’s mainly a collection of shots of background players and actors looking solemn. Plus a few shots of Coppola. If you’re interested in seeing Storaro and the wider crew work then you’re out of luck as there’s only one or two shots with cameras and crew in them. Brando’s assistant made it clear he wasn’t comfortable being photographed without permission (a bit like Jim Carrey) so there’s minimal shots of him.

[Stefan Andersson]

Revised edition of Amos Vogel´s Film as a Subversive Art:
https://www.filmdeskbooks.com/shop/p/fi ... ersive-art
" hundreds of errors have been corrected. Accompanied by over three hundred rare film stills, newly sourced and re-scanned".

https://www.screenslate.com/articles/su ... ersive-art
The editors "ended up re-typesetting the entire book and re-scanning almost all of the hundreds of images from the Amos Vogel archives at Columbia University. Colvill and Perlin also didn’t anticipate the number of inaccuracies that would eventually lead them to undertake a major revision. They contacted film programmer Herb Shellenberger, who became a detective of sorts, assiduously tracking down correct details of the films referenced in the book. The inaccuracies weren’t necessarily the fault of Vogel: “He was seeing these films for potential festival inclusion because he juried for Oberhausen and Cannes, Berlin, and obviously New York Film Festival,” Shellenberger told me. “Any information that he was given that was incorrect would have been repeated in the book. For instance, English titles were listed for films never screened for English-language audiences. Shellenberger brought up the quest to verify an obscure student film about funeral services cited by Vogel, Poslední věci člověka by Jovan Kubicek (Czechoslovakia, 1967). The Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (FAMU), where the film is archived, had never heard of the title given in the book: Meditation on the End of Human Life. It was most likely never shown outside of Czechoslovakia. Other edits include discrepancies between premiere dates and production dates, diacritical marks, and shooting locations. Colvill and Shellenberger made careful editorial decisions to correct the record, but also to preserve Vogel’s essence. In the epigraph, Vogel misattributes a quote to Goethe: “Only the perverse fantasy can still save us.” Colvill decided to leave it as is."

[andyli]

I ordered this edition. The whole book retypeset? Sure. But they may have also introduced new typos. Noticed a dash typed as a hyphen even before I finished the preface.

[Peacock]

I ordered this edition. The whole book retypeset? Sure. But they may have also introduced new typos. Noticed a dash typed as a hyphen even before I finished the preface.

This is one of my favourite books. How do the newly scanned stills look in comparison to the older editions? Or are they essentially the same?

[andyli]

I don't have the older versions with me at the moment, but I can upload some samples of the new scan for you to see later. Oh yeah I guess we are officially doing screenshot comparison for movie books now.

[Peacock]

I don't have the older versions with me at the moment, but I can upload some samples of the new scan for you to see later. Oh yeah I guess we are officially doing screenshot comparison for movie books now.

I’m a little nervous if Ritrovalta was involved in the scans and have added a tint.

[therewillbeblus]

Does anyone have recommendations of, or is there a consensus on the best books on Antonioni?

[Matt]

I always prefer interviews over biographies or criticism, and I remember The Architecture of Vision: Writings and Interviews on Cinema being pretty interesting, though I also remember Antonioni being pretty opaque regarding his ideas and technique. The volume of interviews devoted to him in the "Conversations With Filmmakers" series might be good as well and probably has some overlap with the former book.

The links above are to the Internet Archive, where you can actually make an account and borrow the online books. There's also his autobiography and a few books of criticism available there as well.

[ellipsis7]

Does anyone have recommendations of, or is there a consensus on the best books on Antonioni?

There are so many, but you could no better than start with Antonioni by Sam Rohdie (BFI) and Antonioni: or, The Surface of the World by Seymour Chatman (University of California Press)...

[Sloper]

Sam Rohdie's book is a real pleasure to read, and full of interesting information. The Seymour Chatman and Peter Brunette books are also very accessible. I really like Arrowsmith's The Poet of Images, although as noted in the introduction he didn't have time to properly edit and revise it before his death - there are things I stumble over or disagree with in the book, but it's still full of great insights.

That Bowling Alley on the Tiber is fascinating but a bit frustrating, as it's basically fragments of ideas Antonioni never had a chance to turn into films, or that were filmed in a compromised form in Beyond the Clouds. There's another (harder to get) book called Unfinished Business, with more sketches and treatments for films that were never made. Some of these are beautifully written, but Antonioni is such a visual artist that I find I have to read the sketches quite slowly and imagine what they might have looked like in order to enjoy them. So overall, I do find The Architecture of Vision a more rewarding (or less painful) read - even at his most opaque, Antonioni always had thought-provoking things to say about his own films, and his vagueness was a way of leaving space for viewers to form their own ideas.

The closest thing to a page-turner I've read on this topic is Wim Wenders' My Time With Antonioni, which is a diary about the making of Beyond the Clouds. Wenders does not hold back about what a nightmare this experience was, and I think it's clear that he didn't like his co-director very much by the end of the shoot, so it's not exactly a feel-good book. He describes Antonioni being abusive on set, and implies pretty unambiguously that he was getting off on filming the gratuitously long sex scenes (which made the actors very uncomfortable - they really needed an intimacy coordinator here...) But I don't like idealising artists or the artistic process anyway, so I'd strongly recommend this one.

[therewillbeblus]

Thanks all!

[hearthesilence]

Is there a good book that details the work done on the sets and production design from the Fox Studio films of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s directed by Murnau, Borzage, Ford et al?

[beamish14]

Film Desk Books is republishing Bowling Alley on the Tiber in March.

Has anyone begun to tuck into Patrick McGilligan’s absolutely massive new Woody Allen biography? I love the works he’s edited, and his 35-year old book on Robert Altman remains the best book on him.

[Dr Amicus]

It’s on my radar. I loved his books on Cukor, the first substantial biography of a director I read, and Lang, so I think I might splash out on a hardback of this if it’s as good as I hope.

[Mr Sausage]

Any thoughts on Jamey Fisher’s book on Petzold? I see it’s published in 2013, so does it include discussions of Barbara or not?

Obviously not the author’s fault, but it’s always a bit annoying when a book like this can’t include important films or developments. This particular book is ripe for an expanded second edition that includes Phoenix and the Paula Beer era.

[diamonds]

It does include a brief discussion of Barbara at the end, yeah. (It's the film on the cover!) I've read a few chapters from it over the years and would say it's a solid book, geared toward examining the political & economic contexts within and around the films. Fisher is one of the preeminent scholars on the Berlin School, so at the very least it's useful as a basis for understanding where Petzold is coming from, and maybe especially for understanding the Farockian side of his films. If you want a taste of Fisher's writing, here he is on Barbara.

I've been meaning to check out Brad Prager's book on Phoenix, but there's another one for you if it wasn't already on your radar.

[Mr Sausage]

It does include a brief discussion of Barbara at the end, yeah. (It's the film on the cover!) I've read a few chapters from it over the years and would say it's a solid book, geared toward examining the political & economic contexts within and around the films. Fisher is one of the preeminent scholars on the Berlin School, so at the very least it's useful as a basis for understanding where Petzold is coming from, and maybe especially for understanding the Farockian side of his films. If you want a taste of Fisher's writing, here he is on Barbara.

I've been meaning to check out Brad Prager's book on Phoenix, but there's another one for you if it wasn't already on your radar.

Thanks for the Brad Prager rec! I’ve ordered it.

I did notice Barbara was on the cover, but figured it was bound to be there either way given its recency and all the festival awards and international attention.

[Tom Amolad]

With warning that this involves self-promotion (I'm midwife to these books), I wanted to alert people to a new book series that may be of interest. The series, entitled Cutaways, and edited by Erika Balsom and Genevieve Yue, is devoted to short book, each on a single object, motif, or technique that runs across a range of films. Further details on the first three books can be found here.

The first, Elena Gorfinkel and John David Rhodes's account of film props releases today and is already getting attention insofar as it itself appears as a prop in a new short film by Joanna Hogg (see the third picture here for its brief cameo). There's also an excerpt from the book up at Mubi.

Next month sees the release of the series' second book, Jules O'Dwyer on Hotels, which makes a brilliant case for hotels well beyond the Bates and Overlook as being centrally entertwinted with film, from their concerns over the organization of space to their function, from Grand Hotel on, as a cinematic mode of marking where public and private stories come together. It's also a very fun read.

On the horizon is Martine Beugnet on film blur as a feature, not a defect; followed by Devika Girish on identity papers, Genevieve Yue on trains, and Ben Mercer on brain surgery.