The Best Books About Film

[Gordon]

Has anyone read British cinematographer, Christopher Challis' autobiography, Are They Really So Awful?: Cameraman's Chronicles? He was the camera operator on Powell and Pressburger's A Matter of Life and Death, Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes and graduated to cinematographer on The Small Back Room, The Elusive Pimpernel, Gone to Earth, The Tales of Hoffmann, Genevieve, The Battle of the River Plate, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, Mary, Queen of Scots and countless other prestigious films, working with many superstars. Surely a must for Powell and Pressburger fans, no? I ordered that used copy at Amazon, so if I'll post my thoughts on it, asap. I have found that accounts of productions by cinematographer's are often the best as they are usually down-to-earth fellows who have no axe to grind and view things objectively, but they see the good, bad and ugly of movie making.

[jdcopp]

Though it may not be the best book on film, in its field - censorship - it is the best. Banned films : movies, censors, and the First Amendment / Edward de Grazia and Roger K. Newman. This book is usually catalogued with the books on legal issues.

My blog

[Gordon]

Ah, yes Cardiff's book is also on my wish list.

This looks like a doozy: Film Lighting: Talks with Hollywood's Cinematographers and Gaffers.

This is a classic text: Cinematography by Kris Malkiewicz.

This one is "lavishly illustrated" - Cinematography: Theory and Practice.

David Watkin's intellectual yet witty autobiography, Why Is There Only One Word for Thesaurus? (1998), due to its high price, has eluded me so far, but it is said to be one of the great movie memoirs. A revised second edition is in the works. Watkin (1968's The Charge of the Light Brigade, Catch-22, The Devils, Jesus of Nazareth, Oscar for Out of Africa) is one of my favourite cinematographers, but he is more than just that, apparently.

[hangthadj]

I've seen quite a few people reccomend the Kieslowski on Kieslowski, but has anyone picked up the BFI book on Three Colors or Annete Isadorf's Double Lives, Second Chances and have any thoughts on them?

[ArchCarrier]

Bordwell's book will be available online some time soon. More news as and when...

The book can now be read and downloaded online!

[broadwayrock]

The book can now be read and downloaded online!

Thanks ArchCarrier. Thats a great find!

[foggy eyes]

Yes, that's awesome. I've been wanting to read this for a while. Thank you! Bordwell's recent The Way Hollywood Tells It is quite wonderful too.

[Cinetwist]

Can anyone recommend any good books debating auteur theory and authorship?

And is there a book that contains a translation of the first "manifesto" (or whatever word is more appropriate) on the auteur theory (the poilitiques des auteurs I think)?

[ellipsis7]

How about...



Still in print - buy and search inside here

Book Description
The film director or `auteur' has been central in film theory and criticism over the past thirty years. Theories of Authorship documents the major stages in the debate about film authorship, and introduces recent writing on film to suggest important ways in which the debate might be reconsidered.

[jdcopp]

I have just posted on my blog a translation of mine of Alexander Astruc's "The Birth of a New Vanguard -- The Camera-Stylo".

Also, you might want to read the roundtable discussion "Six Characters in Search of an Auteur" which first appeared in Cahiers du Cinema in May 1957 and which is reprinted in translation in an abridged form in Cahiers du cinéma, the 1950s : neo-realism, Hollywood, new wave / edited by Jim Hillier . Jacques Rivette and Eric Rohmer discuss the politique des auteurs with André Bazin, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze, Pierre Kast and Roger Leenhardt.

As an aside, during the night (at least in the West), this thread past 20,000 views

[Fletch F. Fletch]

I'm most of the way through Taschen's Michael Mann book and enjoying it immensely... it comes in a hardcover coffee table style and is easily the best book on the director and his films so far (not that there's much competition). The book is on the light side (much like their Polanski book) content-wise.... a mix of factoids and analysis but I felt that on the facts side of things the author didn't go deep enough. He glosses over the production problems on The Keep and The Last of the Mohicans for example. However, I did enjoy the detailed look he gave Ali which I always felt was a criminally underrated and misunderstood in Mann's filmography so it was nice to see it championed.

But the real reason to get this book is for photographs... Amazing! Tons and tons of behind the scenes pics from all of his movies, including way back to The Jericho Mile. Lots of stuff I had never seen before.

At any rate, I'd say it is a great primer for those new or unfamiliar with Mann's work and a definite must-have for fans of Mann's films for the photos alone.

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

Has anyone read Colin MacCabe's "The Eloquence of the Vulgar"? I'm a fan of his books on Performance and Godard so I'd like to know if this one is good, too. What about "Out Takes: Essays on Queer Theory and Film"? Is that a good collection? I read the table of contents and it looks good, but I don't know if there are any better books to read first.

[Guest]

The book can now be read and downloaded online!

Fantastic! I read some pages of it in a library in New York but couldn't afford to buy one of those $100+ copies from amazon Marketplace or eBay. Thanks for the link!

The Village Voice will release a Film Guide on December 5th including 50 years of reviews. A Table of Contents can be found here.



It includes some of the finest writing by Mekas, Sarris and Hoberman I can remember. Oh, and how could I forget Georgia Brown, a very good critic who was recently fictionalised in her son Noah Baumbach's THE SQUID AND THE WHALE.

[a.khan]

Many thanks for that tip, Carsten. I will be getting it.

Given Lim's depature from the Voice, it's a little ironical seeing the book headlined with his name on it.

May be the book can serve as a reminder of what the Voice once stood for.

[filmlover]

This topic certainly is a useful one - there are some great recommendations above (and many which I'd second - especially Vogel's Film As A Subversive Art).

However, there are a few books that I consider essential and which (surprisingly) haven't yet been mentioned.

Firstly there's Hoberman and Rosenbaum's Midnight Movies, which is actually very similar in spirit to the Vogel book. It offers a rigorous analysis of 'cult' films and leftfield cinema - the chapters on 1960s New York Underground filmmakers (i.e. Kenneth Anger, Ken Jacobs, Ron Rice, Jack Smith etc.) and on Lynch's 'Eraserhead' are particularly indispensable.

Then there's Jim Kitses' Horizons West which, for my money, is the best book on Westerns ever published (particularly in its BFI-published, 2004 incarnation). Whilst it's centred around studies on John Ford, Anthony Mann, Budd Boetticher, Sam Peckinpah, Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood, it also has some interesting points to make about more recent Westerns such as 'Dead Man' and 'Open Range' (which is, incidentally, a vastly underrated film).

Lastly, there's my favourite ever book on film: the Plexus-published Never Apologise: The Collected Writings of Lindsay Anderson. This book features the entire gamut of Anderson's masterful writings (as the numerous section headings - 'American Film', 'Anderson on Anderson' etc. - testify). However, the highlight of the book is its inclusion of Anderson's 1956 'Sight and Sound' piece 'Stand-Up! Stand-Up!'; a call for commitment in film criticism, and one of the best accounts of film's power.

All of which can be found at Amazon UK

[Greathinker]

Making my way through Annette Insdorf's Double Lives, Second Chances: The Cinema of Krzysztof Kieslowski and finding it interesting. I have to admit to not being particularly affected by his films, and not caring for the self-conscious overuse of colors in his trilogy, but I'm starting to get an idea of his philosophy and film making methods. The chapter on Red was particularly eye opening. I should listen to some of her commentaries next I suppose.

[jguitar]

I don't think that this has been mentioned yet: I was looking at David Bordwell's blog, and he's worked it out with the Center for Japanese Studies Publications to make Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema available as a pdf. Here is a link to the book's intro page and here is a link to Bordwell's blog entry. As he mentions, the pictures are atrocious. His blog entry relates why the book has been out of print. Hopefully, some publisher will decide to eventually pick this up. Otherwise, the book should eventually be available on print-on-demand.

[Fletch F. Fletch]

Firstly there's Hoberman and Rosenbaum's Midnight Movies, which is actually very similar in spirit to the Vogel book. It offers a rigorous analysis of 'cult' films and leftfield cinema - the chapters on 1960s New York Underground filmmakers (i.e. Kenneth Anger, Ken Jacobs, Ron Rice, Jack Smith etc.) and on Lynch's 'Eraserhead' are particularly indispensable.

I would second this recommendation. This book was my first exposure to both Hoberman and Rosenbaum's writing and I was hooked! I also thought that the chapters on Jodorowsky and George Romero are also top notch. I've collected a few books about "Midnight Movies"/cult films over the years and this one still remains the best of the bunch.

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

How is Cowie's book on Ford and westerns?

[Felix]

A few which I do not think have been mentioned here.

The Time Out film guide remains one of the best compendiums (and is now online as well). They have their failings, rather highbrow much of the time and blind spots wrt Tarkovsky and Sokurov, for example, but I like the fact that the reviews are the ones that were written when the film came out, and not written with the benefit of hindsight.

Time Out main man Geoff Andrew's The Film Handbook, published by Longman in 1989 (and not to be confused with a more recent and less interesting book of his) is an encyclopaedia of directors with best films highlighted along with brief biographies (it is a lot better than I am making it sound...) The same blind spots are there but it is still good. Probably available through abebooks or the other usual sources.

More recent works are the three volumes of the DVD Delirium Guides. These are not highbrow though they do feature, for example, virtually all the Criterions and plenty of other highbrow stuff. What they do cover, better than any of the competition, is the world of cult movies, Asian new wave, Euro trash, the lot (if your name is Lino, then these are essential). The reviews are comprehensive, about two pages each, and small type at that, and more importantly for folk here, they cover all different versions worldwide and advise on aspect rations, extras, print quality and more. If you want to know which version of Argento's Opera or Tsukamoto's Tetsuo to go for, look no further. A Beaver for the cultist and one you can hold in your hand. (Make sure you go for the Redux volume 1 though). A word of warning, or two. These books will lead to you spending large sums of money on films you possibly never heard of before, and the authors are very enthusiastic about their subject so blind buying is a little dodgy... For all that, the highest recommendation possible.

Has anyone mentioned Flicker? Yeah, must have...

[seferad]

A really excellent DVD guide is The DVD Stack edited by Nick Bradshaw and Tim Robey. It might not be as comprehensive as some of the other guides out there, but it selects 300 really excellent DVDs and box sets, based on mostly on the quality of the film as well as the quality of the DVD itself. The selection clearly leans more towards 'highbrow' cinema, but you'll find Ferris Bueller's Day Off in there along with the Taiwanese Hou Hsiao Hsien box set, and several Criterions. The essays are also quite detailed (compared to guides with far more listings) and very enjoyable to read, and the choices made are mostly brilliant I think.

[denti alligator]

Didn't someone, somewhere publish the screenplay for Peter Greenaway's Draughtsman's Contract. I really, really want a copy of this. Anyone able to help?

[ellipsis7]

It's not coming up on Abebooks, so probably was never published...

However the BFI financed this film and their Special Collections department (as well as production archive) are almost certain to hold script originals...

Provided you have the permission of the rights holder (the BFI, making it easier) it is likely you could obtain a photocopy of the script from Special Collections provided you declare your usage as solely for research/study purposes...

Recently a photocopy of the original script of A CANTERBURY TALE cost me Stg£35 from Special Collections...

A lot of Greenaway scripts have been published by Dis Voir
here

GREENAWAY Peter

Filmmaker, painter and writer.
Cook, the thief, his wife and her lover (the)
Baby of mâcon (the)
Zed and two noughts (a)
Eight and a half women
Pillow book (the)
Drowning by numbers
Falls (the)
Rosa
gold
Fear of drowning by numbers
Papers
Nightwatching
Belly of an architect (the)

Amazon.co.uk has a page for an unavailable edition of THE DRAUGHTSMAN'S CONTRACT ostensibly published by Dis Voir on 30 June 2003, but it's not on the Dis Voir site, so is unlikely it ever saw the light of day....

[a.khan]

Gavin Smith, editor of Film Comment, talks about modern American film criticism and, specifically, The Village Voice in his editor's letter piece. There's also a review of Voice's Film Guide book on Pg78.

I'm typing out some comments from Smith:

For over 40 years, the Voice has remained essential reading for movie lovers, the publication of an anthology of the alternative weekly's criticism is welcome...the book isn't perfect. Veteran Voice readers might be puzzled by the total absence of Manhola Dargis and Katherine Dieckmann, and disappointed that the great Tom Allen is represented by only three entries, and former film section mainstay Amy Taubin by just two. But my biggest objection is that the book simply isn't big enough to do justice to either the diversity or the excellence of the paper's critical heritage.

The book's on its way to me. Despite the tepid enthusiasm, I cannot wait...

[David Ehrenstein]

However, the highlight of the book is its inclusion of Anderson's 1956 'Sight and Sound' piece 'Stand-Up! Stand-Up!'; a call for commitment in film criticism, and one of the best accounts of film's power.

A very important piece of film criticism, it is also an attack on Elia Kazan that rings as true now as then.

Just read Mark Sinker's excellent BFI Film Classic book on If... Highly recommended to lovers of that very great film.