The Best Books About Film

[BrianInAtlanta]

Has anyone here read Sarris' Interviews with Film Directors oop book(s?)? What is the quality like and could anyone give a run down of some of the directors featured?

Antonioni, Ingmar Bergman, Bresson, Peter Brook, Bunuel, Chabrol, Chaplin, Cukor, Clive Donner, Dreyer, Eisenstein, Fellini, Ford, Godard, Hawks, Hitchcock, John Huston, Buster Keaton, Kurosawa, Lang, David Lean, Losey (with Nick Ray), Lubitsch, Mamoulian, Ophuls, Pasolini, Peckinpah, Polonsky, Preminger, Nick Ray (with Losey), Satyajit Ray, Renoir, Resnais, Riefenstahl, Rossellini, von Sternberg, von Stroheim, Sturges, Truffaut, and Welles.

All are reprints or translations from Cahiers, Sight and Sound, Flim Culture, NY Film Bulletin and others.

[kaujot]

Can anyone recommend some books that deal with cheap, schlocky sci-fi/horror from the 40s, 50s, and 60s? Roger Corman, Val Lewton, etc. I'm not very educated on that era of those genres, and I'd love to learn more.

[Dr Amicus]

Can anyone recommend some books that deal with cheap, schlocky sci-fi/horror from the 40s, 50s, and 60s? Roger Corman, Val Lewton, etc. I'm not very educated on that era of those genres, and I'd love to learn more.

I'd definitely recommend David J Skal's The Monster Show - it's especially strong on the 30s and 40s, but it possibly the best survey of the field during this time (Kim Newman's Nightmare Movies is excellent, but covers post 1968).

As a tentative recommendation, Jonathan Rigby's American Gothic looks excellent as well - I have a copy but it's part of my massive book kevyip. If it's as good as his earlier English Gothic, than this will be well worth reading too.

Note that these are both survey works - there are more in depth studies (eg Benshoff's book on the monster as coded queer - it's title temporarily escapes me) which are fascinating, but perhaps rely on a bit of familiarity with the underlying films.

[HarryLong]

If it's as good as his earlier English Gothic, than this will be well worth reading too.

It is. Though he repeates some misinformation from other sources, which is a bit annoying. (The howler about Tom Tyler's Kharis performance being a result of arthritis from Denis Gifford's book being a notable one.)

there are more in depth studies (eg Benshoff's book on the monster as coded queer - it's title temporarily escapes me)

Monster in the Closet.

[kaujot]

Many thanks!

[HarryLong]

There's also a McFarland reissue-in-paperback by James JJ Johnson, CHEAP TRICKS AND CLASS ACTS (or is it t'other way round?) that concentrates on production info (sets, special effects, monster costumes) for horror/fantasy/sci-fi films of the 1950s.

[viridiana]

Just throwing it out there for those interested, I am currently reading Maureen Turim's book about Oshima Nagisa and it's really, really good. It's a great summation of exactly what I've been thinking about the man's films for a number of years.

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

Just to second Viridiana, it is a book worth seeking out. I was reading some of it last month and while it's an academic study, it's got a lot of good information on Oshima and context for the films. I'm not an expert on his films so I don't know if some of her interpretations were overreaching, but the breadth of the information was valuable. I'd certainly buy a copy to consult. Here's the publisher info.

[beamish13]

If you have even the slightest interest in Canadian cinema and/or animation in general, you need to buy Karen Mazurkewich's CARTOON CAPERS. It's a staggeringly well-researched ode to animated shorts, features, and television shows from the Great White North and it has some very detailed pieces on important animators who have made their careers there. It can be purchased for very little money on Abebooks or Amazon.

also worth checking out:

British Animation: The Channel Four Factor by Clare Kitson

[MichaelB]

also worth checking out:

British Animation: The Channel Four Factor by Clare Kitson

Absolutely seconded - it's one of the defining texts on British animation, particularly from the 1980s onwards. It's a good solid overview of British animation history in general, with about 25 detailed chapters on individual works, and gorgeously illustrated throughout with stills (often in colour), storyboards and other documents. Obviously, there's a heavy bias towards Channel 4's involvement (Kitson was its first and only full-time commissioning editor for animation), but C4 had such a colossal input into British animation in the 80s and 90s that this scarcely matters.

[Murdoch]

Are there any in-print books about George Kuchar? Maybe not solely about him, but that have a section with a good analysis of his films and/or placement in film history.

[Ben Cheshire]

I'm loving Everything is Cinema (on Godard) and Who the Devil Made It (Bogdan interviews greats, therefore Bogdan is great) and Easy Riders Raging Bulls I'm loving too.

I recently got Nobody Is Perfect, Charlotte Chandler's Billy Wilder "personal biography," basically just embellished interviews. Its great.

[Peacock]

Are there any in-print books about George Kuchar? Maybe not solely about him, but that have a section with a good analysis of his films and/or placement in film history.

Desperate Visions: The Films of John Waters & The Kuchar Brothers: The Films of John Waters and the Kuchar Brothers

I haven't read it so cannot say if it's any good or not, but it looks to me like that is has the largest amount of Kuchar analysis that your likely able to find in a book which wasn't written by themselves (Reflections from a Cinematic Cesspool)

Has anyone read this book? I'm interested myself

[Ben Cheshire]

Is The Films of Fritz Lang: Allegories of Vision and Modernity pretentious, or is it down to earth in some parts? I ask because I've read excerpts via Amazon preview and my concern is this: I don't like books that deify directors, particularly ones that worked mainly in a B-movie idiom, and who strove to be down to earth in their own work.

I like it when they focus on the films (both production and analysis) and I don't mind academia, but only in small doses; is there a book about Fritz Lang that anyone thinks might suit me better?

[lubitsch]

Is The Films of Fritz Lang: Allegories of Vision and Modernity pretentious, or is it down to earth in some parts? I ask because I've read excerpts via Amazon preview and my concern is this: I don't like books that deify directors, particularly ones that worked mainly in a B-movie idiom, and who strove to be down to earth in their own work.
I like it when they focus on the films (both production and analysis) and I don't mind academia, but only in small doses; is there a book about Fritz Lang that anyone thinks might suit me better?

It is rather debatable if Fritz Lang worked mainly in a B-movie idiom, his German films aren't exactly cheapies. And Lang would have been the first to encourage a bit of deification or at least recognition of his own contributions.
This aside I can give you only a very unsastisfying answer. There's no really good book on Lang on the market. Gunning's heave tome could easily lose 100-200 pages. It begins with his utterly superflouous suggestion to talk about "destiny machines" not only about destiny in Lang's films. Then comes an especially bad chapter on Der müde Tod which somehow manages to talk only about Walter Benjamin but not about the film itself. Followed by a chapter on Die Nibelungen with equally few insights and a startling recognition and lengthy discussion of a certain shot which is supposed to look like a skull (not to me).
Just as I was ready to trash the book into the corner it got better and had some valuable points and insights to make regarding the American films. So all told, yes, there are parts which are worth reading, but don't think that you get accessible, intelligent and sharp prosa like something from Bordwell or Naremore. Unfortunately there's no sufficiently good analytic book on Lang in English or German, including Eisner's unmemorable one. McGilligan's biography is at least well researched and certainly worth a look, but he marrs it by descending again and again in lurid sensationalism, trying to pin Lang as the murderer in the famous case, but declaring in the footnotes, hidden away, that he hasn't even proof that Lang's first wife, the murder victim, ever existed (some research for the Berlinale retro showed that she indeed existed).

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

Are there any in-print books about George Kuchar? Maybe not solely about him, but that have a section with a good analysis of his films and/or placement in film history.

There's also Reflections from a Cinematic Cesspool. It's largely anecdotal, but it's got some good info from George and Mike themselves.

[HarryLong]

is there a book about Fritz Lang that anyone thinks might suit me better?

If you can find a copy (maybe through alibris), you'd probably like Peter Bogdonavich's interviews with Lang on his US films. Lang can be very forthright here about projects that didn't work out as he'd hoped or others that he took on because "even a director has to eat."
But I have to agree with lubitsch that Lang was hardly a B-movie director (at least until he got to Hollywood) and certainly wasn't averse to a little adulation (apparently he hired publicists whose job it was to identify him as the Master of Suspense over & above Hitchcock in the public eye - a good deal of jealousy and enmity there about Hitch having copped a title Lang felt should be his).
Interesting to find out that I'm not the only one who finds Eisner's writing curiously unsatisfying...

[lubitsch]

is there a book about Fritz Lang that anyone thinks might suit me better?

If you can find a copy (maybe through alibris), you'd probably like Peter Bogdonavich's interviews with Lang on his US films. Lang can be very forthright here about projects that didn't work out as he'd hoped or others that he took on because "even a director has to eat."
But I have to agree with lubitsch that Lang was hardly a B-movie director (at least until he got to Hollywood) and certainly wasn't averse to a little adulation (apparently he hired publicists whose job it was to identify him as the Master of Suspense over & above Hitchcock in the public eye - a good deal of jealousy and enmity there about Hitch having copped a title Lang felt should be his).
Interesting to find out that I'm not the only one who finds Eisner's writing curiously unsatisfying...

Eisner herself found the book unsatisfying as she admitted in her autobiography thinking she was maybe too close to the subject. As for Bogdanovich's book one should be aware that Lang is lying like hell, McGilligan is quite good at taking some of his claims apart.
There's an old monography from 1967 I think by Paul Jensen which isn't too bad. But there really isn't a up-to-date good book along the lines of Bordwell's monography on Eisenstein or to a certain degree Fujiwara's book on Tourneur. The Berlinale people blew the opportunity relasing a massive catalogue with pictures and documents but didn't order a book with a thorough essay as they did before.
It's generally amazing and in fact shocking how many directors are yet to be sufficiently explored. I'm just writing a doctor thesis on William Wyler and can't say that the most honored Hollywood director got a long trail of critical publications to follow.

[Ben Cheshire]

But I have to agree with lubitsch that Lang was hardly a B-movie director (at least until he got to Hollywood) and certainly wasn't averse to a little adulation (apparently he hired publicists whose job it was to identify him as the Master of Suspense over & above Hitchcock in the public eye - a good deal of jealousy and enmity there about Hitch having copped a title Lang felt should be his).
Interesting to find out that I'm not the only one who finds Eisner's writing curiously unsatisfying...

Its pretty pointless to argue these things without stating a definition of B-movie, but my point really should have been that Lang worked mainly in populist genre filmmaking, which defied being seen as arty. His German work may have been bigger-budget A-pictures, but it was nevertheless populist, because of the epic two-parter tradition of the time; and thus, also avoided being accused of being precious and arty.

Also, both of you mentioned Lang's preferences for adulation; as long as the book acknowledges that the artist isn't perfect, and talks about their deficiencies as well, I usually am all the more impressed when things go right. This infallible genius stuff is just against my personal preference.

[Dr Amicus]

It's generally amazing and in fact shocking how many directors are yet to be sufficiently explored. I'm just writing a doctor thesis on William Wyler and can't say that the most honored Hollywood director got a long trail of critical publications to follow.

Really? About 10 years back I'd picked up a copy of Herman's biography of Wyler - subtitled (IIRC) "The Life of Hollywood's most acclaimed director" and thought "Is he? Not any more". So I submitted a PhD proposal looking at attitudes to Wyler and attempting my own reading of his work. Unfortunately, the only place to bite enough to offer me an interview turned it down (my name and avatar should tell the area I ended up covering for my PhD) - one of the interviewees was an admirer of Wyler and indeed had long toyed with a book length analysis so probably picked up all my weaknesses.

Anyway, good luck with the thesis. Wyler is a fascinating director who seems to have been largely forgotten by the film studies canon - so make you sure finish it and then get it published!

Back to Lang - I like the McGilligan book, despite the aforementioned HE'S GUILTY!!! GUILTY!!!! sections. It's a great read, although definitely not the monograph that is needed (I haven't read the Gunning yet - but it is on my Amazon wishlist, not that anyone I know will actually buy it for me).

[lubitsch]

It's generally amazing and in fact shocking how many directors are yet to be sufficiently explored. I'm just writing a doctor thesis on William Wyler and can't say that the most honored Hollywood director got a long trail of critical publications to follow.

Really? About 10 years back I'd picked up a copy of Herman's biography of Wyler - subtitled (IIRC) "The Life of Hollywood's most acclaimed director" and thought "Is he? Not any more". So I submitted a PhD proposal looking at attitudes to Wyler and attempting my own reading of his work. Unfortunately, the only place to bite enough to offer me an interview turned it down (my name and avatar should tell the area I ended up covering for my PhD) - one of the interviewees was an admirer of Wyler and indeed had long toyed with a book length analysis so probably picked up all my weaknesses.
Anyway, good luck with the thesis. Wyler is a fascinating director who seems to have been largely forgotten by the film studies canon - so make you sure finish it and then get it published!

Don't worry I will because I made an entry test for immediate PhD and if I don't finish it, I have no degree at all. I'm focusing mostly on the style screenshooting my way through his oeuvre a la Bordwell.
Herman's biography is a case in point. Fine as a biography but with critical insight into the subject whatsoever. McGilligan is better in this regard.

Back to Lang - I like the McGilligan book, despite the aforementioned HE'S GUILTY!!! GUILTY!!!! sections. It's a great read, although definitely not the monograph that is needed (I haven't read the Gunning yet - but it is on my Amazon wishlist, not that anyone I know will actually buy it for me).

It's certainly entertaining to read, not bad in its observations and judgements and as I said he did his homework interviewing quite a lot of people though I had the impression that toward the end of Lang's career he's merely eager to dismiss the films as an example of a decline and didn't even bother to dig a bit deeper or researching too much.
But it's hard to trust a biographer who has to admit that he isn't certain that there was a murder or even a victim and spends nevertheless many pages on trying to prove that Lang is guilty (the title of the book "The Nature of the Beast" is already in bad taste). I know that some German researchers who assisted him distanced themselves sharply from his way of dealing with the affair and my prof was so enraged about the whole thing that he threw the biography off the reference list in the second edition his collection of director portraits.

[aox]

Some advice is needed, so I want to run this by you,

I am in a History of Property class for my grad program and it is time to write my final paper. Last week we read a dissertation about Music copyright, Piracy, and the formation of Intellectual Property. I am curious as to whether or not film had a similar or parallel history in terms of copyright and litigation. I would like to do a paper on the beginnings of film and how the courts handled any legal issues regarding film as property. Do any of you know any peer reviewed academic historical books or articles that might aid in writing a historiography on this topic? Thanks in Advance.

[Matt]

I don't have a lot of time to create a bibliography for you, but look up The Motion Picture Patents Company (a.k.a. The Edison Trust). If you need help finding sources, talk to a reference librarian at your university library.

[aox]

Thanks Matt for some guidance. I really appreciate it. Looks like the medium of film in the beginning dealt with technical issues of patents, as opposed to music which took an intellectual property/copyright route. They don't seem to parallel each other at all.

Anyone have any further articles or books to recommend? Did film have any copyright issues in the beginning (1890s-1930)? Did theater owners not copy each others copies? I know they certainly reedited films, but I don't think that violates copyright.

[domino harvey]

Frames could be copyrighted and so you'd get hundreds of individual frames being cataloged-- this is how a lot of silent films have survived. As far as branding went, look at Life of an American Fireman, which featured the Edison brand literally filmed in the background of the action. I don't have my copies in front of me, but early film books like Million and One Nights or Movie-Made America would probably be good resources