The Best Books About Film

[karmajuice]

I've mentioned it on the forum before, but Stanley Cavell's Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage is an excellent book. It's probably not what you're looking for because it has no historical dimension whatsoever, but it takes seven classic screwball comedies and builds a complex and rather beautiful critical/philosophical framework around them. His syntax is occasionally impenetrable, but the book is a revelation and completely reinvented the way I watch comedies (of all kinds).

[ambrose]

Jasper Sharp's Behind the Pink Curtain: The Complete History of Japanese Sex Cinema, despite its quasi academic approach (it's quite informative on the unique historical and economic forces that led to the boom of the "Pink Film" genre) still relies somewhat heavily on glossy soft-porn images from these films,more than necessary to illustrate the text, but for some reason this does not bother me!.To balance off this guilty pleasure i have also been reading the densely historical Visions of Japanese Modernity: Articulations of Cinema, Nation, and Spectatorship, 1895-1925, by Aaron Gerow!. As an afterthought i wonder whether anyone has heard of this overpriced and obviously out of print book!. Frank Borzage:The Life and Films of a Hollywood Romantic. I recently bought the three Carlotta Blu-ray releases(Seventh Heaven Street Angel and Lucky Star) and desperately require more context.

When it appeared that no one had heard of the volume on Frank Borzage I inquired about above I still took a risk and bought the book;now while I have found Herve Dumont to be both insightful and as poetic in style as Borzage's films themselves I nonetheless find his obsession with masonic ritual and his almost constant attempts to link every Borzage film with those rituals rather curious!.(Borzage was a member of the masonic lodge but I personally fail to see any connection between that and his films.)

[lubitsch]

When it appeared that no one had heard of the volume on Frank Borzage I inquired about above I still took a risk and bought the book;now while I have found Herve Dumont to be both insightful and as poetic in style as Borzage's films themselves I nonetheless find his obsession with masonic ritual and his almost constant attempts to link every Borzage film with those rituals rather curious!.(Borzage was a member of the masonic lodge but I personally fail to see any connection between that and his films.)

Sorry I didn't see your post, but I fully agree with you. It's a good book, a mix of biography, production history and film analysis, but the free mason stuff was completely puzzling to me, too. When I wrote my entry on Borzage for a book with director portraits I omitted the whole stuff and don't think it's for the worse. But Dumont is generally a good informative writer, his book on Siodmak is equally good.

[ambrose]

Sorry I didn't see your post, but I fully agree with you. It's a good book, a mix of biography, production history and film analysis, but the free mason stuff was completely puzzling to me, too. When I wrote my entry on Borzage for a book with director portraits I omitted the whole stuff and don't think it's for the worse. But Dumont is generally a good informative writer, his book on Siodmak is equally good.

Thank you for the heads up on Dumont's Siodmak Study but It appears to be untranslated as well as being currently unavailable!.

[Matt]

Any great history/critical books about screwball comedies? Something along the lines of David Desser's Eros plus Massacre or Rick Altman's American Film Musical (two great recommendations from this forum).

Romantic Comedy in Hollywood from Lubitsch to Sturges by James Harvey. Beautifully written and very informative, if not quite the scholarly definitive work. I'd avoid Stanley Cavell unless absolutely necessary.

[Cash Flagg]

This just-released coffee table book on Hammer poster art looks quite nice.

[ambrose]

The Imperial Screen: Japanese Film Culture in the Fifteen Years' War, 1931-1945. For a history of the coercion and co-option of an entire generation of artists, film-makers, studio bosses and film critics into the militarist project of a fascist state this is a surprisingly entertaining read!.( Peter B. High has a sharply cynical side to his writing.)

[kemalettin]

any recommended cinematography books?i read 5C's and other well knowns

[Richard--W]

Arizona's Little Hollywood
Sedona and Northern Arizona's Forgotten Film History 1923–1973 by Joe McNeill

Having played host to more than 60 Hollywood productions—from the early years of cinema through the 1970s—Sedona, Arizona’s impact on the film industry is revealed here for the first time. Detailing its role as a silent but stunning backdrop to all types of movies, this volume covers the silent films, B westerns, World War II propaganda, and film noirs filmed on location in Arizona. Lavishly illustrated, this reference tells the story behind an anti-American Nazi propaganda western; the true history of filmmaking in Monument Valley; the first-ever inclusive guide to the location filming of Stagecoach; and descriptions of each Arizona production from conception through reception by critics and audiences, with plot summaries and complete details of cast and crew.

Joe McNeill is the cofounder of Sedona Monthly magazine and the former vice president and design director at CMP Media. He has created promotional material for the Chrysler Corporation, Mutual of New York, Piels beer, and MTV. He lives in Sedona, Arizona.

I am easily bored by most movie histories and rarely finish reading them. Not this time. I consider Arizona's Little Hollywood the best book on westerns and early film making ever written. Joe McNeill is not merely a movie buff, he is a real nuts-and-bolts researcher who understands the day-to-day reality of the production process. And he's a discerning historian of Arizona, too. It helps to have a story no one has ever told before, and this book is full of surprises. Think you've read everything there is to know about John Ford's Stagecoach? Surprise -- McNeill offers new information and insight into that film, too.

The book has a website, and the author has a blog that's worth keeping up with. You can also buy it on amazon.

Of course, the history of early westerns and film making in southern Arizona is another story.

[Richard--W]

any recommended cinematography books?i read 5C's and other well knowns

The Cinematographer's Manual.

[Anhedionisiac]

any recommended cinematography books?i read 5C's and other well knowns

Well, it's not particularly technical but A Man With a Camera by Néstor Almendros is a great read.

[Andrew_VB]

does anyone have a suggestion for a good book on Terrence Malick? I'm mostly interested in reading about his editing and cinematography philosophies, not really biographical stuff.

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

Chion's The Thin Red Line monograph from BFI might help.

[Two Cent James]

The second edition of David Bordwell's Planet Hong Kong is now available as a PDF here.

I never got to read the first edition. Can't wait to sink my teeth into this one.

[Forrest Taft]

does anyone have a suggestion for a good book on Terrence Malick? I'm mostly interested in reading about his editing and cinematography philosophies, not really biographical stuff.

Apart from the BFI book mentioned by Jean-Luc Garbo, you might want to check out The Cinema of Terrence Malick, an essay collection edited by Hannah Patterson. There is also a Badlands monograph written by Paul Outhwaite, though I believe it is no longer in print.

[colinr0380]

It looks as if the excellent collection of essays on Robert Bresson curated by James Quandt is due to be released in a new, expanded edition in April

[karmajuice]

I pre-ordered it months ago during the California Press sale. I had no idea it would be this long before it got released (not that it matters, it'll only be added to a growing stack of books).

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

Indiana University Press will release Jane Campion this spring.

[matrixschmatrix]

Can anyone recommend any of the BFI Film Classics series in particular? I'm working through Amy Taubin's on Taxi Driver, and really enjoying it, but I get the feeling that they're not necessarily all of the same caliber (considering that Camille Paglia wrote one.)

[Shogo36]

Can anyone recommend any books/articles (even documentaries?) that address Sidney Poitier's popularity in the fifties and sixties with concern to the subsequent effect on or parallelism with race relations, both with whites and within the black community?

Having been interested in this myself, hopefully I can provide a couple good sources. One that is integral is Mark Reid's chapter on A Raisin in the Sun in his book Redefining Black Film there is quite a bit on Poitier there. Some of my other favorite pieces on Poitier are by James Baldwin. If you haven't read his book/extended essay on film, "The Devil Finds Work" I would suggest it, he writes beautifully on Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. He writes with such warmth and biting wit combined with a serious engagement with the text; I love passages like these:

The immense quantity of polish expended on Guess Who's Coming to Dinner is meant to blind one to its essential inertia and despair. A black person can make nothing of this film--except, perhaps, Superfly--and when one tires to guess what white people make of it, a certain chill goes down the spine.

He has a few other brief essays that can be found in the recently put out collection Cross of Redemption, including a profile on Poitier.

Although outdated and alittle rough in spots there is a solid chapter in Daniel Leab's From Sambo to Superspade that helps contextualize Poitier's roles and how they were viewed.

Finally one author that has helped with the historical structures around the time period, for me at least, is Peniel E. Joseph. Few authors are as attuned to the complexities and subtleties of the Black Power movement as Joseph is, and he communicates it so clearly and wonderfully I can't help but recommend Dark Days, Bright Nights and Waiting 'Til The Midnight Hour.

I hope that helps out some! If it would be of any help I could also send you some bibliographies for essays I've written.

[cinemartin]

I enjoyed Rosenbaum's Dead Man and Adrian Martin's Once Upon A Time In America in the same series.

[Matt]

Can anyone recommend any of the BFI Film Classics series in particular? I'm working through Amy Taubin's on Taxi Driver, and really enjoying it, but I get the feeling that they're not necessarily all of the same caliber (considering that Camille Paglia wrote one.)

I've read a scattered bunch of these over the past two decades, but the only ones I have kept are Gary Indiana's on Salo (really illuminated the film for me) and Mark Kermode's on The Exorcist (the definitive yet concise history of the film). I have a memory like a sieve now, but I remember thinking Richard Corliss' on Lolita was clever but somewhat lightweight. I remember liking Richard Boston's on Boudu, but not why I liked it. And I remember being pissed off by Jill Forbes' Les Enfants du paradis (though it had some informative parts, particularly on Alexandre Trauner's contribution to the film) and by Sam Rohdie's on Rocco and His Brothers.

Looking at the list now, Robin Wood's on Rio Bravo looks like a must-read, and there is a handful of others that seem like definitive statements on particular films by excellent minds (James Naremore on Sweet Smell of Success, Simon Callow on Night of the Hunter, Yuri Tsivian on Ivan the Terrible, et al).

[colinr0380]

I thought that John Rockwell's book on The Idiots was one of the best of the BFI series that I've read so far, definitely fitting into Matt's 'definitive statement by an excellent mind' classification with its close reading through that surprisingly complex film.

And Iain Sinclair's book on Cronenberg's Crash is interesting, ranging beyond the film and into Ballard and the other adaptations of his work. Though it is less a close discussion of Cronenberg's film and more a rumination on the effect that Ballard's book has on modern society, making it more appropriate as a way into Sinclair's collaborations with Christopher Petit - sci-fi/paranoia thriller/documentary tinged takes on modern society and alternate histories or recontextualised pasts in deliriously obscurantist works such as Asylum and The Falconer, or more recently the slightly more accessible London Orbital (A fantastic film reclaiming the most monotonous areas of the environment - a road which doesn't lead anywhere - and imposing a psychological and historical element onto it, reclaiming the 'negative space'. It also actually features an interview with Ballard cheekily urging the filmmakers to blow up one of the big shopping centres that has cropped up on the titular ring road!)

Though be warned that their video features make Godard look straightforward and mainstream! Probably the best, if unrepresentative, introductions to Chris Petit's work (and from there into the Sinclair collaborations) would be the Wim Wenders-road trip influenced first feature Radio On (which I often think might have had an influence on the much later Morvern Callar) or the documentary on Manny Farber produced for the BBC (but featuring many of the frames within frames and travelling footage familiar from, for example, The Falconer or London Orbital) called, of course, Negative Space.

[antnield]

Antonia Quirke's Jaws is a very good read - probably my favourite of the Modern Classics I've sampled. Of the Film Classics range I recall Taylor Downing's Olympia being excellent (Downing himself was a sports documentary maker covering a number of Olympic Games), though it may be OOP now. Also worth a look are J Hoberman on 42nd Street, Kim Newman on Cat People and Colin MacCabe on Performance. There's also been a TV Classics initiated - I've not read many, but did review the latest pair - on Cathy Come Home and Law and Order - recently.

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

Both of the Robin Wood books in the BFI series are superb. Alas, Wings of the Dove is OOP. Ian Christie's A Matter of Life and Death is indispensable. The book is valuable for the endnotes alone, but the analysis of the film is excellent. Anyone interested in that movie should buy it immediately.